But the feature--the characteristic--the essence--the very soul of Pau--is neither the fair landscape, nor the rushing Gave, nor the stedfast Pyrenees. It is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which envelopes castle and town--which makes haunted holy stones of these grim grey towers--which gives all its renown and glory to the little capital of Bearne. Look up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the _Place_. These features are more familiar to you than those of any foreign potentate. You know them of old--you know them by heart--a goodly, honest, well-favoured, burly face--a face with mind and matter in it--a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically of a MAN. Passion and impulse are there, as in the jaw of Henry VIII.; energy and strong thought, as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and courtly, and meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn by the helmet, speaks the soldier--the conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad forehead and the quick eye tell of the statesman--he who proclaimed the edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and blithsome expression of the whole face--what does it tell of--of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues of Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees; and whose weakness--manly while unmanly--made him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues. There is an encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri. He had a grand mind, with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few vices. If he gave up a religion for a throne, he never claimed to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed, he was the last man in the world deliberately to run his head against a wall. He thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by turning Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender; and he did it. Yet for all--for the men of Rome and the men of Geneva--he had a broad, genial, hearty sympathy. Were they not all French?--all the children of a king of France? Henri had not one morsel of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear, and his heart too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity--with the sternest will--with the most exalted powers of calm comprehension--and the most honest wish to make his good people happy--he could be recklessly vehement--Quixotically generous--he could fling himself over to his passions--do foolish things, rash things--insult the kingdom for which he laboured, and which he loved--and thunder out his wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor who stood by him in field and hall, and whose practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand visions of majestic politics and astounding plans for national combinations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good King,