When the Baron d’Arros returned to his father to receive a blessing after this exploit, the old man bitterly reproached him for having spared even one. “My son,” said he, “how, as a valiant Maccabee, have you allowed this Nicanor to live? The crow you have spared will pluck out your eyes.” Calvinism, after having had complete mastery for over half a century, seems not to have taken firm root. At the present day, out of a population in Béarn of 426,350, there are but 5000 Protestants. In one of his bear-hunting expeditions, when a lad, Henry of Navarre had visited the church of Bielle in the Val d’Ossau, and had noticed the columns of Italian marble in the church, the spoils of a Gallo-Roman villa. When he was king he sent to Bielle to have these pillars forwarded to him in Paris. The reply of the villagers was: “Sire, our hearts and our properties are yours, dispose of them as you will; but as to these columns, they belong to God. _Entendez vous-en avec lui._” As king, Henry said that his ambition was that every one of his subjects, every peasant in Béarn, should be able every Sunday in the year to put _la poule au pot_! A couple of centuries later an epigram was written thereon. “Enfin, la poule au pot sera donc bientôt mise; On doit du moins le présumer; Car, depuis deux cent ans qu’on nous l’avait promise, On n’a cessé de la plumer.” He did not forget the good things he had eaten in his native land when far away in Paris, and he wrote to Pau to have sent to him “some good melons, muscat grapes, figs, and peaches”; and again, “a dozen geese of Béarn, the fattest that can be found, such as will do honour to my country.” The old cathedral church of Lescar occupies a very ancient site--a Roman town, Beneharnum, on the great Roman road that ran from Narbonne to Dax. The church deserves a visit. Although not large it is fine, dating from the twelfth century. It was erected apparently on the site of some Roman building, for the mosaic that surrounds the high altar, and marks where stood the original apse of the first church, is Roman work, and represents a tiger hunt. It was formerly covered by the floor of the stalls; but these have been removed, and the mosaic, that was much injured, has been restored carefully.