“In some respects,” says Mr. White, “the province of Gascony through which the Court was now travelling, had suffered more than any part of France from the effects of the war. The Protestants had succeeded in putting down Romanism, and at every step he took Charles was reminded of the outrages offered to his religion; he restored the old form of worship, but the scenes he then witnessed appear never to have been forgotten. As he rode along by the side of the Queen of Navarre he pointed to the ruined monasteries, the broken crosses, the polluted churches; he showed her the mutilated images of the Virgin and the saints, the desecrated graveyards, the relics scattered to the winds of heaven.”[F] [F] White (H.), _The Massacre of S. Bartholomew_. London, 1868. Jeanne looked with sparkling eyes and with a heart that swelled with exultation at this wreckage, but she noticed the pain it caused to the young king, and thenceforth regarded him with distrust. [Illustration: ROOM OF JEANNE D’ALBRET, CASTLE OF PAU] A Béarnais named Gondin ventured to remonstrate with Jeanne at her high-handed dealings. “The King of France,” said she, “choses to have but one religion in his realm. I am a queen, and I choose to have but one.” “The King of France!” echoed Gondin; “that is another matter. I could cross your majesty’s kingdom in a hop, skip, and jump.” “Then I will trouble you, sir, to hop, skip, and jump out of my realm, and that smartly,” was her prompt reply. At the same time that Jeanne issued her order for the change of religion, she forbade the dances of the peasantry and wailing at funerals. Of Jeanne d’Albret it might be said in the words of Quintus Curtius: “Nihil præter vultum fœmineum gerens.” Marguerite de France, sister of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III was married in 1572 to Henry of Navarre. The union was not happy, neither cared for the other; and when Marguerite came to Pau she was affronted at her treatment. “We came to Pau,” she wrote, “where no exercise of the Catholic religion is tolerated. However, I was allowed as a favour to hear Mass in a little chapel three or four paces in length, and so narrow that seven or eight persons filled it. At the hour of Mass, the drawbridge was raised to prevent the Catholics of the place from attending; for they were most desirous to do so, having been debarred from it for several years. But, it being Whit-Sunday, some of the citizens succeeded in slipping in before the drawbridge was raised. They were not detected till the end of the service, when some Huguenots who were spying perceived them. They instantly informed the king’s secretary, and in my presence were dragged out, whipped, and cast into prison, and were not released for long, and then not till they had paid a heavy fine.”