In erecting the statue of Henri IV in the Place Royale at Pau the Béarnais rendered homage to the most illustrious son of Béarn. Without Henri Quatre one would not know that Béarn had ever existed, for it was he who carried its name and fame afar. Luchon, Biarritz and Pau are known of men and women of all nations as tourist places of a supreme rank, but the mind ever wanders back to the days of the gallant, rough, unpolished Henri who went up to Paris and, in spite of opposition, became the first Bourbon king of the French after the Valois line was exhausted. The Béarnais--the mountaineers, as they were often contemptuously referred to at the capital--had a time of it making their way at Paris, for there was a rivalry and jealousy against the southerners at Paris which was only explainable by traditionary prejudice. When Catherine de Medici was making the first efforts to marry off her daughter Marguerite to Henri, Prince of Béarn, the feeling was at its height. It is curious to remark in this connection that the two queens of Navarre by the name of Marguerite were separated by only a half century of time, and both were to become famous in the world of letters, the first for her "Heptameron" and the second for her "Mémoires." The daughter of the Medici would have none of the rough prince of Béarn and told her mother so plainly, resenting the fact that he was a Protestant as much as anything. "My daughter, listen," said the queen mother. "This marriage is indispensable for reasons of state. The king, your brother, and I myself, like the king of Navarre as little as you do. That little kingdom in the high valleys of the Pyrenees is a veritable thorn in our sides, but by some means or other we must pluck it out." "I shall go to Nerac, in Gascony," the queen mother continued, "to conclude a treaty with my sister, Reine Jeanne, the mother of Henri de Béarn. When an alliance is concluded between the queen of Navarre and myself your marriage _shall_ take place." This was final! Tradition--or perhaps it is a fact, though the average traveller won't remark it--says that the Béarnais are an irascible and jealous people. Proud they are, but there are no external evidences to show that they are more irascible or jealous than any other folk one meets in the French countryside. In the valleys the type is more delicate than that of the inhabitants of the mountain slopes, and throughout they are fervidly religious without being in the least fanatical.