"'I will not,' replied he, 'until I have told thee some news.'
"The knight's lady was so much frightened, the hairs of her head stood on end and she hid herself under the bed-clothes.
"'Well,' said the knight, 'and what news hast thou brought me?'
"The spirit replied, 'I am come from England, Hungary or some other place, which I left yesterday, and such and such things have happened.'
"Thus did the Lord de Corasse know by means of this messenger all things that were passing in the different parts of the world;" and for years this invisible mediæval sprite kept his patron comfortably posted on all current events, in a ghostly adumbration of the modern newspaper press.
But Coarraze and its castle carry us on later than Froissart's days. Here young Prince Henry ran about in his hardy youth, and romped and played pranks on his future subjects. Nothing delighted him more in after life than to come back here and hunt up his old peasant playfellows, bashful and reluctant, and bewilder and charm them with his state and his bonhomie. Most of the old castle is gone now, destroyed by a storm and since replaced by a newer structure. The old baron's spirit-messenger or the "white lady" of the House of Navarre have only the single tower remaining, for their ghostly visits,—finding change over all save the far line of the Pyrenees glittering unearthly in the moonlight.