‘His birth was the occasion ... of Jeanne’s [his mother’s] winning of a bet by a song.... Henri II. [Jeanne d’Albret’s father] knew full well that Jeanne felt great curiosity about his will. Suddenly he rose and opened a coffer, from which he took a long neck-chain fastened to a small gold box. “_Ma fille_,” he said, “you see this box? Well, it shall be your own, with my last will, which it contains, provided that, when your child is about to enter the world, you will sing me a Gascon or a Béarnais song. I do not want a peevish girl or a drivelling boy.” Jeanne was charmed, and her father ordered his faithful servant Cotin to sleep in her dressing-room, and to fetch him at the eventful moment. When it came, between two and three on a bleak winter morning, she remembered to keep her promise, and despatched Cotin to her father. Not long after she heard King Henri’s step upon the stair, and in a strong sweet voice she began to sing the ballad of the country-side, “Notre Dame du bout du pont, aidez moi à cette heure”--an invocation to the miraculous image of the Virgin, the patron-saint of matrons, which stood in the chapel at the end of the Bridge of Pau. Henri was in time to receive the baby into his arms. With great circumspection he wrapped it in the skirts of his robe, and then conscientiously placed the gold box in his daughter’s hand. “There! that is thine, my girl,” he said, as he did so; “but this”--pointing to the child--“is mine.” With these words he carried it away to his own apartments, where the nurse awaited him. But before he gave it to her he fulfilled the old custom of Béarn, and first rubbed its little lips with clove of garlic; next offered the new-comer wine in a golden cup. Legend says that the precocious Prince smelled the wine, and raised his head joyously with other “signs of satisfaction”--that he swallowed the rich red drops which his grandfather put upon his tongue. “Va, tu seras un vrai Béarnais!” exclaimed the delighted Henri.’ It is a pity that the château has been so much restored. The work was chiefly carried out, with poor taste, under Louis Philippe. In No. 5, Rue Bernadotte, which is marked with an inscription, Bernadotte, King of Sweden, was born on January 26, 1764.[H] He was a lawyer’s son, who entered the army, and, at the early age of thirty years, had become General of Brigade. When the heir to the throne of Sweden died, Bernadotte was chosen, in 1810, as his successor, Napoleon thinking that his late General would submit to his wishes. Bernadotte, having no friendly feeling towards Napoleon, acted with complete independence, and in the fatal Battle of Leipsic the Swedish troops under him had a large share in Napoleon’s defeat. The lawyer’s son became Charles XIV. of Sweden in 1818. THE ROAD TO TARBES