The character of Henri Quatre would certainly have been brighter had he wanted those failings of which poor Fleurette was the first victim: yet, as a man of strong passions, in a dissolute age, as a king, a conqueror, a soldier, warm, generous, enthusiastic, our sterner morality is but too much inclined to unbend towards him, and to attribute his faults to the same ardent nature which might lead him occasionally into error, but which carried him on to so many noble exploits. The love, that the Bearnais bear to the memory of their native prince is beyond all bounds. In the reign of a vainer monarch, Louis XIV., a subscription was opened at Pau for erecting a statue to Henri. Louis liked statues to nobody else but himself: and though he did not absolutely prohibit the proposed monument, he caballed and intrigued with the people of the place, till he forced them to change their original intention into erecting a statue to himself, instead of one to his progenitor. It was accordingly fixed in its place with great pomp; but in an inscription on the pedestal the Bearnais took care to state, that the statue was erected, "à Louis XIV. roi de France et de Navarre, _petit fils_[16] de notre grand Henri." --------------- [Footnote 16: "To Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, grandson of our great Henry." The force of the satire is not to be rendered in an English translation.] --------------- THE EAUX BONNES. Nulla di più immirabile che un suolo il più fertile sotto il clima più bello, ovunque intersecato di vive acque ovunque popolato da villaggi.--GANGANELLI.