At which the good king, full of joy, exclaimed, before all the ladies and gentlemen in the room, 'You will be a true Bearnais!' kissing him as he spoke." Every time I pass through the court-yard of this dilapidated building, I feel that it can never revive from its ruin; the desolation is too complete; the defacement too entire.

What interest can exist in restorations to effect which so much must be cleared and scraped away that scarcely a trace of what was original can remain?
How restore those medallions on the outer walls, which the taste of the first Fair Marguerite, and her Henry, placed in rows at one extremity of the court?
how restore those beautifully-carved door-ways, and cornices, and sculptured windows, elaborate to the very roof?
or renew the _facade_ next the mountains without effacing that singular line of _machicoulis_ which divides the stages.

How replace the terrace--once existing, but long gone--without destroying venerable morsels of antiquity, precious in their ugliness! and how render the whole place sightly without clearing away the rubbish of the old _Tour_ _de la Monnaie_, now built in with shabby tenements?
Yet this will probably be done.

Considering the state of the town, and the many improvements requisite in it, it would seem more judicious, perhaps, to effect, these, and to abandon the idea of _restoring_ the castle.

To repave the court, and clear away dirt, might be done with little time and cost; and the old fabric would not suffer by this act.