Note 366 — Chapter XIV

The remark is said to have been accidentally overheard by Henry of Navarre, afterward Henry the Fourth, of whose presence little account was taken in consequence of his youth. (He was just eleven years and a half old.) But his intimate follower, Agrippa d'Aubigné, would have been likely to give him as authority, had this been the case. He only says: "Les plus licentieux faisoient leur profit d'un terme du Duc d'Alve à Baionne, que dix mille grenouilles ne valloient pas la teste d'un saumon." Hist. univ., liv. iv., c. v. (i. 206). Jean de Serres, ubi supra, iii. 125, gives the expression in nearly the same words: "Satius esse unicum salmonis caput, quam mille ranarum capita habere."