Page:A book of the Pyrenees.djvu/134

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102
THE PYRENEES

the works of Gombaud, whereupon this latter retaliated with an epigram.

"Vous chocquez la nature et l'art,
Vous qui n'êtes né que d'un crime;
Mais pensez vous que d'un bastard
Le jugement soit légitime?"

Antoine fell in the battle of Castelnaudary, in 1631. Half a century later, there appeared in Anjou an old hermit, who called himself John Baptist, and whose face resembled Henri Quatre markedly. Moreover, he admitted having been in the battle of Castelnaudary, and showed himself to be intimately acquainted with Pau and with every part of the castle; but he would never say who he was. Louis XIV, having heard of him, sent to demand whether he was the Antoine de Bourbon, son of Henry IV, who had been reported dead. He refused to answer, and on his death-bed, when again questioned on this point, returned an evasive answer.

In matters of religion Henry IV was tolerant. He wrote in 1594:—

"I have in my kingdom of Béarn two parishes separated only by a river. In one of these there has never during my reign been any (Calvinist) preacher; in the other, never a Mass said, yet the inhabitants of these parishes have not wronged one another to the value of a sou. You will see, that I will bring about such concord in my kingdom that there will be no further squabbles."

But before this, when in Paris, under the surveillance of Catherine de Medici, he was obliged to send the Count de Grammont and a commission into Béarn to restore Catholic worship. D'Aubigné relates an incident relative to this attempt that is characteristic of the temper of the times. When the Baron d'Arros, who had been appointed after Montgomery, by Jeanne d'Albret, to enforce the sole