The prince's agitation called instant inquiry upon him. But all mystery, all concealment was now over; an agony of fear and doubt had taken possession of his mind; and calling loudly to others to aid in his search for Fleurette, he hurried from the château. Servants followed with lights, and soon found the unhappy girl, whose sorrow had been short, though keen. She had chosen the wild basin, the spot near which had so often been the scene of her happiness, now to be her grave. Her heart had never loved but once, and broken to find that love betrayed.
Henry was nearly frantic, but remorse was now in vain. Her father, too, who was left in the world alone--the tale had reached him, and he came to where his poor child lay. His eye first fell upon her lover; he clasped his hands, while agony and wrath struggled hard in his bosom. "O that thou wert not my prince!" he cried, "O that thou wert not my prince!" and he cast himself down beside her.
It was long ere Henri forgot Fleurette; perhaps he never forgot her, for that first passion which sheds a new light upon our being--the brightest thing our youth has ever known--hangs fondly round remembrance, and yields neither to years nor sorrows. Time softens it; but memory hallows it; and on the tomb raised in our heart to past affection, is graven, an inscription which nothing can erase--"To the brightest friend of our youth, Early Love"--so runs the epitaph, "this sepulchre is given by Experience, Memory, and Regret;" Hope too would have added her name, but her eyes were dim with tears.
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."
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.
From the higher range of the Pyrenees, which forms as it were an immense barrier between France and Spain, run a multitude of lateral valleys, each enclosing within its bosom its streams, its villages, and its plains, possessing its own peculiar race of inhabitants, its own usages and superstitions, and often having little communication with any world beyond its boundary of mountains. One of the sweetest and (until late years) one of the least frequented of these valleys, is the Valley d'Ossau, which leads apparently in a direct line to the foot of the Pic du Midi de Pau. I had often stood in the park, and looked up the long vista of hills before me, fancying a thousand things in the blue indistinctness of distance, and lending it as many charms as imagination can bestow on uncertainty; a longing took possession of me, to approach myself nearer to these airy hills whose fairy brightness haunted me: and I was never satisfied till we were on our way to the Eaux Bonnes. Of this little watering place, lying in the deepest recesses of the mountains, report had told such tales, that I got out of patience with my own fancy for believing them. You stupid fool, said I, to Imagination, you are only getting up a disappointment for yourself and me; methinks experience ought to have made you wise by this time; witness all the unpleasant scrapes into which you have plunged me. Just as I was reasoning thus with Fancy, came by a blind man, led by a dog; the sturdy cur would come into our court-yard, for some little affair of his own, and kept tugging and pulling at the rope which tied him, till the blind man, who felt he was going wrong, but did not know by what means to set him right, was fain to comply and let him have his own way. So I gave up the matter too, and we ordered horses for the Eaux Bonnes, for it was impossible for the blind man's dog to tug him into our court-yard one bit more violently than my fancy tugged me into the mountains. And hereby I leave and bequeath the similitude between a blind man and his dog, and any man and his fancy, to any person who may be disposed to profit by the same; giving up all right, title, and claim whatever; upon the said similitude or simile, and declaring and avowing that I will have nothing more to do with it. Always provided, nevertheless, and be it hereby understood and agreed, that these presents be no further considered as gift, bequest, donation, or legacy, than as far as in me lies to give, bequeath, or devise, the similitude or simile aforesaid, inasmuch as it may have been uninvented, unpossessed, and unappropriated, by any other person or persons whatsoever, otherwise, this item to be null, void, and of no effect, anything hereinbefore said to the contrary notwithstanding.
By the time the horses came the next morning, I had quite resolved to be very much disappointed; and I got into the carriage, with precisely the same sort of unwillingness that the animal usually cited as the most striking example of consistency evinces when it is obliged to run according to its driver's will instead of its own. However, the day was fine, and nature seemed resolved to smile me into a good-humour. We rattled down through the town, passed the bridge over the river, commented on the number of beggars, admired the view of the town from the banks, and then turning in amongst the lesser hills which lie to the left of the valley d'Ossau, lost at once the prospect of the mountains, and might have forgotten that we were in the Pyrenees.