If Pau were recommended as a place where storms could be seen in perfection, I should not wonder at persons crowding there, who delight in savage nature. The gales from the 5th to the 15th continued furiously, night and day; the wind howled from all points, rocking the houses, and strewing the ground with ruins--then came a change to hot quiet days for a week. In England, and in all parts of France, the season I am describing was equally violent, but this only proves that Pau has no shelter on these occasions. January ended with fine weather, and occasional fogs, not so dense as in London, certainly, but as thick as in the country in England. The sun, in the middle of the day, being always dangerously hot. My letters from England still announced the same weather, _without the danger_. In February, we had a few days like August, then a heavy fall of snow, which for eight days covered the ground, and was succeeded by burning days; and the month ended with heavy rain and floods. March began with cold winds and rain and sharp frost; and when I left Pau the ground was encrusted with frost in all directions. CHAPTER III. THE CASTLE OF HENRI QUATRE--THE FURNITURE--THE SHELL--THE STATUE--THE BIRTH--CASTEL BEZIAT--THE FAIRY GIFT--A CHANGE--HENRI QUATRE. "Qui a vist le castig de Pau Jamey no a viat il fait." WHEN Napoleon, in 1808, passed through the town of Pau, the Béarnais felt wounded and humbled at the indifference he showed to the memory of their hero, Henri Quatre: he scarcely deigned to glance at the château in which their cherished countryman was born; and with so little reverence did he treat the monument dear to every heart in Béarn, that his soldiers made it a barrack; and, without a feeling of regard or respect for so sacred a relic, used it as cavalierly _as if it had been a church_. They stabled their steeds in the courts of Gaston Phoebus, they made their drunken revelry resound in the chambers of Marguerite de Valois; and they desecrated the retreat where _La brebis a enfanté un Lio_--where Jeanne d'Albret gave birth to him, who, in the language of his mountains, promised that every Frenchman should have a _poule au pot_[27] in his reign. [Footnote 27: The _poule au Pot_ is a general dish with the Béarnais.]