At Bilhère, a little way out of Pau, on the road to Orthez, is the cottage in which Henry was nursed by a peasantess. That cottage remains much in the same condition as it was then, and is pointed out to visitors with pride. When only five years old his mother took him to Paris to present him to Henry II, King of France. The King took the little prince in his arms and asked him, “Veux-tu être mon fils?” The child, unable to speak other than Béarnais patois, pointed to his father and answered, “Aquet es lou seignou pay” (This is monsieur, my father). “You are right,” said the King, “but as you will not be my son, will you be my son-in-law?” To which the boy promptly replied, “Obé.” Marguerite de Valois was then eighteen months older than Henri. After a while in Paris he was taken back to Pau and committed to the care of Suzanne de Bourbon Busset, Baroness Miossens, who was sent with him to the Castle of Coarraze, near Nay, with instructions that he should be reared among the children of the mountains on simple, wholesome diet. Accordingly he was treated like the peasant children--was clothed in the same garb, and partook of the same athletic sports. His food was often dry bread. Frequently he trod the mountain paths with bare feet, or clattered about in sabots. For many years he knew no other tongue than the patois, and in after life a bon mot, or a lively sally in his maternal language, served as one of the most powerful means by which to influence the young Gascons whom he led to battle. Antoine de Bourbon fell at the siege of Rouen in 1562, fighting against the Huguenots, and Jeanne was then left free to force Calvinism on her subjects. Thenceforth she was able to rule despotically in her own dominions, till interfered with by the French king. Beza, with approval, records her declaration: “Sooner than ever again attend Mass, or suffer any of my subjects or my children to do so, I would, if possible, cast them into the depths of the sea.” And to Henry, when young, she said passionately that should he at any time attend Catholic worship, she would repudiate and disinherit him. She began by confiscating Church property and appropriating to herself monastic lands. Commissioners were appointed to go through the country, wreck the churches, and sweep into her mint all the gold and silver chalices, candlesticks, and crucifixes, to be coined into money. She expelled the priests and put ministers in their place. At Pau she hung two of the canons of S. Martin’s, and sent a Huguenot preacher into the pulpit. The town council remonstrated. The Queen’s reply was that she would with her troopers drive the councillors to be present at his predications. She made it punishable with death as high treason not only for a priest to say Mass, but for man, woman, or child to attend at one. Charles IX of France went to Nerac, in Gascony, to visit Jeanne.