Da veniam, Christe, flos militiæ fuit isle,
Et virtute precum, confer sibi gaudia tecum,
Gastonis nomen gratum fert auribus omen,
Mulcet prolatum, dulcescis sæpe relatum,"

Two hundred years afterward, in the tumult of Protestant iconoclasm,
Gaston Phoebus's tomb was broken open, its débris sold, piece by piece,
and Montgomery's Huguenots derisively kicked the august skull about the
streets of Orthez and used it for a bowling-ball:

"They hopped among the weeds and stones,
And played at skittles with his bones."


VIII.

There are a few gleams of humor among these grim recounts. It was always
tinged with the sardonic. Pitard, moralist and pedant, staying at the
Béarnais court, fell into a dispute with a poet, Théophile:

"''T is a pity,' sneered Pitard, finally, 'that, having so much spirit,
you know so little!'

"''T is a pity,' retorted Théophile, 'that, knowing so much, you have so
little spirit!'"

Often the jests take a religious turn. The chaplain of one of the counts
of Orthez, defending his own unpriestly fondness for hunting, asserted
that the ten horns of the stag (_cerf_) stood for the Decalogue; and
that the stag was to be as ardently followed as the sovereign pontiff,