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      Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces




                               _WORKS OF_

                           _FRANCIS MILTOUN_

[Illustration: text decoration]


_Rambles on the Riviera_                                         $2.50

_Rambles in Normandy_                                             2.50

_Rambles in Brittany_                                             2.50

_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_                        2.50

_The Cathedrals of Northern France_                               2.50

_The Cathedrals of Southern France_                               2.50

_Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_      3.00

_Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces_    3.00

_The Automobilist Abroad_                                   _net_ 3.00

                                                        _Postage Extra_

                    [Illustration: text decoration]

                         _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_

                 _New England Building, Boston, Mass._

              [Illustration: A PEASANT GIRL OF THE ARIEGE]




                          Castles and Chateaux
                                   OF
                              OLD NAVARRE
                        AND THE BASQUE PROVINCES

               INCLUDING ALSO FOIX, ROUSSILLON AND BEARN

                           BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

       Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Rambles
             in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles
                         on the Riviera," etc.

                       _With Many Illustrations_

              _Reproduced from paintings made on the spot_

                           BY BLANCHE MCMANUS

                             [Illustration]

                                 BOSTON
                          L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
                                  1907


                           _Copyright, 1907_

                        BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
                             (INCORPORATED)

                         _All rights reserved_

                    First Impression, October, 1907

                            _COLONIAL PRESS
            Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
                           Boston, U. S. A._




By Way of Introduction

    "Cecy est un livre de bonne foy."
                 _Montaigne._


No account of the life and historical monuments of any section of the
old French provinces can be made to confine its scope within
geographical or topographical limits. The most that can be accomplished
is to centre the interest around some imaginary hub from which radiate
leading lines of historic and romantic interest.

Henri de Navarre is the chief romantic and historical figure of all that
part of France bounded on the south by the Pyrenean frontier of Spain.
He was but a Prince of Bearn when his mother, Jeanne d'Albret, became
the sovereign of French Navarre and of Bearn, but the romantic life
which had centred around the ancestral chateau at Pau was such that the
young prince went up to Paris with a training in chivalry and a love of
pomp and splendour which was second only to that of Francois I. The
little kingdom of Navarre, the principality of Bearn, and the dukedoms
and countships which surround them, from the Mediterranean on the east
to the Gulf of Gascony on the west, are so intimately connected with the
gallant doings of men and women of those old days that the region known
as the Pyrenean provinces of the later monarchy of France stands in a
class by itself with regard to the romance and chivalry of feudal days.

The dukes, counts and seigneurs of Languedoc and Gascony have been names
to conjure with for the novelists of the Dumas school; and, too, the
manners and customs of the earlier troubadours and crusaders formed a
motive for still another coterie of fictionists of the romantic school.
In the Comte de Foix one finds a link which binds the noblesse of the
south with that of the north. It is the story of Francoise de Foix, who
became the Marquise de Chateaubriant, the wife of Jean de Laval, that
Breton Bluebeard whose atrocities were almost as great as those of his
brother of the fairy tale. And the ties are numerous which have joined
