The first indications of his existence had been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world at Pau.

Thus, said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, thou shalt not bear to us a morose and sulky child.

The good king, without a kingdom, taking the child, as soon as born, in the lappel of his dressing-gown, had brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic, and moistened them with a drop of generous Gascon wine.

Thus, said the grandfather again, shall the boy be both merry and bold.

There was something mythologically prophetic in the incidents of his birth.
The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand of Aragon.