One Day after this, partly out of Business, and partly out of Curiosity, I went to see the Mint here, and having taken notice to one of the Officers, that there was a difference in the Impress of their Crown Pieces, one having at the bottom the Impress of a Cow, and the other none: 

“Sir,” reply’d that Officer, “you are much in the right in your Observation.  Those that have the Cow, were not coin’d here, but at Paw, the chief City of Navarr; where they enjoy the Privilege of a Mint, as well as we.  And Tradition tells,” says he, “that the Reason of that Addition to the Impress was this:  A certain King of Navarr (when it was a Kingdom distinct from that of France) looking out of a Window of the Palace, spy’d a Cow, with her Calf standing aside her, attack’d by a Lyon, which had got loose out of his Menagery.  The Lyon strove to get the young Calf into his Paw; the Cow bravely defended her Charge; and so well, that the Lyon at last, tir’d and weary, withdrew, and left her Mistress of the Field of Battle; and her young one.  Ever since which, concluded that Officer, by Order of that King, the Cow is plac’d at the bottom of the Impress of all the Money there coined.”

Whether or no my Relator guess’d at the Moral, or whether it was Fact, I dare not determine; But to me it seem’d apparent, that it was no otherways intended, than as an emblematical Fable to cover, and preserve the Memory of the Deliverance of Henry the Fourth, then the young King of Navarr, at that eternally ignominious Slaughter, the Massacre of Paris.  Many Historians, their own as well as others, agree, that the House of Guise had levell’d the Malice of their Design at that great Prince.  They knew him to be the lawful Heir; but as they knew him bred, what they call’d a Hugonot, Barbarity and Injustice was easily conceal’d under the Cloak of Religion, and the Good of Mother Church, under the veil of Ambition, was held sufficient to postpone the Laws of God and Man.  Some of those Historians have deliver’d it as Matter of Fact, that the Conspirators, in searching after that young King, press’d into the very Apartments of the Queen his Mother; who having, at the Toll of the Bell, and Cries of the Murder’d, taken the Alarm, on hearing ’em coming, plac’d her self in her Chair, and cover’d the young King her Son with her Farthingale, till they were gone.  By which means she found an opportunity to convey him to a Place of more Safety; and so preserv’d him from those bloody Murderers, and in them from the Paw of the Lyon.  This was only a private Reflection of my own at that Time; but I think carries so great a Face of Probability, that I can see no present Reason to reject it.  And to have sought after better Information from the Officer of the Mint, had been to sacrifice my Discretion to my Curiosity.