Gaston de Foix

“ But there is, now-a -days, so little humanity or rather gratitude, to be found amongst men, that among all the many who were favoured by, and received benefits from, the noble Gaston, none has been known to give himself any concern for the memory of De Foix, any more than for the excellence and beauty of the work thus abandoned. ”

“ By Agnes, whom he divorced in 1373, he had an only son, Gaston, who is said to have been incited by his uncle, Charles II., king of Navarre, to poison his father, and who met his death in 1381. It is probable, as Froissart says, that he was killed by his father. Left without legitimate sons, Gaston was easily persuaded to bequeath his lands to King Charles VI., who thus obtained Foix and Béarn when the count died at Orthes in 1391. Gaston was very fond of hunting, but was not without a taste for art and literature. ”

“ The demoiselle de Lignac, meantime, is arrived at the Castle of Orthez, and received, as well as her uncle, with great honour by Gaston de Foix, who proposes instituting his beautiful guest the queen of the approaching tournament.
The unknown knight, having left the Cagot with the monks of Aubertin, and acted the part of the good Samaritan by his charge, is next seen pursuing his way southward; where, in the mountains, an interview takes place between him and his father, who is, it seems, a proscribed man. ”

“ The intention of Odon d'Artiguelouve, who is on the spot, had been to murder him as he slept; but the information brought him by his spies, who have watched the old man, entirely changes his intentions. A more secure revenge is in his power, and he returns to his castle with extraordinary satisfaction; leaving the happy lover of Marie, and the successful victor of the lists, to his dreams of future bliss.
The great day arrives on which Gaston de Foix has announced a solemn festival, to be held in [731] honour of the Knight of the Vine-branch, and his affianced bride, Marie de Lignac. ”

“ In 1462 she was taken to the strong fortress of Orthez in Béarn, where, after two years of painful captivity she succumbed to a poison, given her by the guilty hand of a traitor By this means Navarre was united to Foix and Béarn and the ground thus cleared for the subsequent partition of the ancient kingdom between France and Spain.
Eleanor lived ten years longer than her son Gaston de Foix, prince of Viana, who met his death through a wound from a lance at a tournament in Lisbon in the year 1469. ”

“ Formed for mercenary warfare, they proved a perilous instrument in the hands of those who used them, and were hardly less injurious to their friends than to their foes. In 1512 the battle of Ravenna between the French troops and the allies of Julius—Spaniards, Venetians and Swiss—was fought. Gaston de Foix bought a doubtful victory dearly with his death; and the allies, though beaten on the banks of the Ronco, immediately afterwards expelled the French from Lombardy. ”

“ He took a prominent part in the struggle between the rival popes, and founded and endowed the Collège de Foix at Toulouse. The next count was John’s son, Gaston IV., who married Leonora (d. 1479) , a daughter of John, king of Aragon and Navarre. In 1447 he bought the viscounty of Narbonne, and having assisted King Charles VII. in Guienne, he was made a peer of France in 1458. In 1455 his father-in-law designated him as his successor in Navarre, and Louis XI. of France gave him the counties of Rousillon and Cerdagne, and made him his representative in Languedoc and Guienne ”

“ Count Gaston, on hearing this accusation, without giving himself time for a moment's reflection, which would have shown him the improbability of the story, burst into so ungovernable a fury that he became almost frantic, and it was with the utmost difficulty his knights prevented his instantly putting his son to death. The states of Foix and Béarn, to whose judgment he was at length induced to refer the sentence of this involuntary parricide, were more moderate. "My lord," said they, "saving your grace, we will not that Gaston should die: he is your heir, and you have no other." ”

“ At a time when invading armies and the far more terrible “free companies” pillaged the country, until the fair fields of France lay like a barren land, the Count de Foix suffered neither English nor French, Gascon nor Breton, to set foot within his territories, until assurance had been given that his people should suffer no harm. ”

“ To speak briefly and to the point, the Count de Foix was perfect in person and in mind; and no contemporary prince could be compared with him for sense, honor, or liberality."
In good truth, this despotic nobleman illustrated admirably the familiar text, "When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things which he possesseth are in peace." If he ruled his vassals severely and taxed them heavily, he protected them from all outside interference or injury. None might despoil their homes, nor pass the boundaries of Béarn and Foix, without paying honestly for all that was required. ”

“ Joffre to do his sturdy bit in saving France.
The ancestral home of the Foch family is on the Garonne River, among the foothills of the Pyrenees. Here the river is hardly more than a trout stream threading its way down the wooded slopes or murmuring through the valleys. It is just such a spot as any boy would like to call "home."
The father of Ferdinand Foch had been born here during the days of the First Empire, when the fame of the Corsican was ringing around the world—and had consequently been christened Napoleon. ”

“ And the impression made upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become one of the small classics of the war—endlessly reproduced whenever the story of Foch is told.
"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very remarkable role.
"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!] , slender and supple, and rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a stem too slight. ”

“ It was Fox-Foot who spoke first. Touching one splendid nugget almost contemptuously with the toe of his moccasin, he sneered "It is the curse of the paleface, this gold. 'Most every white man he sell the soul within his body for gold, gold, but not so Larry. I know him. He prize this thing because it is the reward of pluck, of work, of great patience, of what white men call 'grit.'"
"Thank you, Foxy," said Larry, rising and extending his fine hand, which grasped the Indian's with a warm, true grip. "You mean that—mean it with all your loyal young redskin heart. ”

“ Foix. The circumstance happened in Aquitain. St. Foix liked the story, but did not like to relate it of the French, and so fathered it upon the Spaniards. It is such writers as St. Foix who have brought a general suspicion upon French literature. The design of the peasants is called Impia pietas by S. Pietro Damiano. ”

“ In 1559 he completed the Latin edition [1] of his martyrology and returned to England. He lived for some time at Aldgate, London, in the house of his former pupil, Thomas Howard, now duke of Norfolk, who retained a sincere regard for his tutor and left him a small pension in his will. He became associated with John Day the printer, himself once a Protestant exile. Foxe was ordained priest by Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, in 1560, and besides much literary work he occasionally preached at Paul’s Cross and other places. ”

“ The leading article was headed
"AN APPEAL."
"Foxes of Britain!" it began; "opposed though we have always been to revolutionary politics, a clear line is indicated to us out of the throes of the Re-birth. The old feudal relations between Foxes and Men have had their day. The England that has been the paradise of the wealthy, of the pink-coated, of the doubly second-horsed, must become that of the oppressed, the hunted, the hand-to-mouth liver. In a word, we have had enough of Fox-Hounds; henceforth we will have Hound-Foxes."
Then the policy was outlined. Foxes could not hunt hounds—no ”

“ George Fox says, "It was opened to me," or "at the command of God I did so and so." "Then at the command of God, on the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being just nineteen) , I left my relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with young or old." "About the beginning of the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English, alike untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary, he was a master. ”

“ You cannot expect much of foxes, but it struck me as especially foxy that he should put the wanton character of his destructiveness off on man, especially when he must have known how carefully we preserve the fox, in the best interests of sport. ”

“ His exploits in the Soudan recall a time when there was no smile on the face of John Bull as he looked across to France. A poet in his ideality and lyric quality, he has the sublime courage of the Early Christian, the personal sway of the born leader, the heart and tenderness of a woman.
No French general has come into closer contact with the English than Foch, for his army neighboured theirs for long months together, and none has a higher opinion of their qualities or was more sensible of the vast improvement effected in their fighting methods during the progress of the war. ”

“ In the summer of 1671, George Fox and some other Friends visited the West Indies and the continent of [Pg 30] America, to push the work of evangelisation and of organising the societies there. They landed in Barbadoes, after a voyage enlivened by constant dangers from the leakiness of the vessel, and once by an almost miraculous escape from capture by a Sallee man-of-war. Fox's son-in-law, John Rous, was in the company, and on landing he was at once taken to the house of Mr. Rous, senior, who was a wealthy sugar planter. ”

“ Fox treated me with a kind of deference—as if I were a great unknown. His “you literary men” was pleasing. It was the homage that the pretender pays to the legitimate prince; the recognition due to the real thing from the machine-made imitation; the homage of the builder to the architect.
“Ah, yes,” it seemed to say, “we jobbing men run up our rows and rows of houses; build whole towns and fill the papers for years. But when we want something special—something monumental—we have to come to you.”
Fox came in again. ”

“ And so strongly has the character clung to him of a fierce, inhuman persecutor, that even biographers who tell us, almost in one breath, from Foxe, that he undertook the burning of heretics cheerfully, and, from the surer testimony of documents, that he was admonished by letter from the king and queen not to dismiss the heretics brought before him so lightly as he and his brother bishops had done, seem unconscious that the two statements require to be brought into harmony. ”

“ Foxy's at the helm."
"The man wouldn't shoot Fox-Foot, wouldn't kill him, would he, Larry?" came Jack's anxious voice.
"Shoot him! Shoot Foxy!" Then Matt Larson laughed gleefully into his blankets. "Why, Jack, no man living could ever get a bead on Foxy in this wilderness. No man could ever find him or see him, though he were lying right at the man's own feet. I think too much of Foxy to expose him to danger. ”

“ He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. ”

“ The count heaped malediction and insult upon the youth, then suddenly leaped over the table, knife in hand, and fell upon him like a wild beast. But the knights and the squires fell upon their knees before him weeping, and saying: “Ah, ah! my lord, for Heaven’s sake do not kill Gaston; you have no other child.” With great difficulty he restrained himself, doubtless thinking that it was prudent to see if no one else had a part in the matter, and put the youth into the tower at Orthez. ”

“ Like lightning, George Fox turned round on the high step where he was standing near to Priest Lampitt, and saw at his elbow the little pompous Justice, his face flushed, full of fussiness about his own dignity and anxious to arrange everything according to his own ideas.
George Fox, who felt he had a message from God to deliver, had no intention of being interrupted by any man in this way. ”

“ Charles James Fox died September 13, 1806. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, having assumed office on the 5th February, shortly after the death of William Pitt. Wordsworth's sadness on this occasion, his recognition of Fox as great and good, and as "a Power" that was "passing from the earth," may have been due partly to personal and political sympathy, but also probably to Fox's appreciation of the better [Pg 49] side of the French Revolution, and to his welcoming the pacific proposals of Talleyrand, perhaps also to his efforts for the abolition of slavery. ”

“ Foxy barked sharply, urgently alive in the stronghold of the dead, and Hazel went to explain why she could not come. They held a long conversation, Hazel whispering. Foxy eloquent of eye. Foxy had a marked personality. Dignity never failed her, and she could be hilarious, loving, or clamorous for food without losing a jot of it. She was possessed of herself; the wild was her kingdom. If she was in a kennel—so her expression led you to understand—she was there incognito and of her own choice. Hazel, sitting at Edward's table, had the same look. ”