of things,--not their decay. Dissolution and putrescence are alike
common and unclean ... in State or organism."

For all that, Orthez and its traditions are too significant to hasten
by. Nowhere is the picture of mediæval life more strongly illuminated;
in no spot shall we more fitly pause to summon back the inner past of
the Pyrenees we are approaching. But we would linger over it only as it
was in its best days, and leave to others the drearier story of its
decadence.

It is Froissart, the old historian and traveler, genial, story-loving
Sir John, who tells us most about Orthez and Gaston. Orthez, as the
capital of Béarn, was in his time, at its meridian, (it was afterward
supplanted by Pau,) and Gaston Phoebus, known as the Count de Foix, was
lord both of Beam and of the neighboring county of Foix. It was
precisely five hundred years ago, come next St. Catherine's Day, that
the old chronicler alighted from his horse here in Orthez. He was come
on a visit to the count, well introduced, and seeking further material
for his easy-going history of the times; knowing that foreign knights
assembled in Orthez from all countries, and that there were few spots
more alive to the sound of the world's doings or better informed in the
varying gossip of wars and court-craft.

Froissart liked to write, "and it was very tiresome," he remarks, "to me
to be idle, for I well know that when the time shall come when I shall
be dead and rotten, this grand and noble history will be in much fashion
and all noble and valiant persons will take pleasure in it and gain from
it augmentation of profit." So, seeking fresh chapters, he had come to
Orthez, where he was at once handsomely received by Count Gaston at this
Castle of Moncade. Here he remained through the winter, affable and