VII.
Gaston Phoebus died suddenly as he had lived violently. He was hunting near Orthez, three years after Froissart's visit, and to ward evening stopped at a country inn at Rion to sup. Within, the room was "strewed with rushes and green leaves; the walls were hung with boughs newly cut for perfume and coolness, as the weather was marvelously hot even for the month of August. He had no sooner entered this room than he said: 'These greens are very agreeable to me, for the day has been desperately hot.' When seated, he conversed with Sir Espaign du Lyon on the dogs that had best hunted; during which conversation his son Sir Evan and Sir Peter Cabestan entered the apartment, as the table had been there spread." He called for water to wash, and two squires advanced; a knight, the Bourg d'Espaign, (the hero of the Christmas Day exploit,) took the silver basin and another knight the napkin. "The count rose from his seat and stretched out his hands to wash; but no sooner had his fingers, which were handsome and long, touched the cold water, than he changed color, from an oppression at his heart, and his legs failing him, fell back on his seat, exclaiming, 'I am a dead man: Lord God, have mercy on me!'"
It is a significant comment on the period, that amid the commotion at the inn the first thought was of foul play. "The two squires who had brought water to wash in the basin said, to free themselves from any charge of having poisoned him: 'Here is the water; we have already drank of it, and will now again in your presence,' which they did, to the satisfaction of all. They put into his mouth bread and water and spices, with other comforting things, but to no purpose, for in less than half an hour he was dead, having surrendered his soul very quietly. God, out of his grace, was merciful to him."
He was entombed before the altar in the little church at Orthez, with imposing obsequies. No epitaph remains, but this of a preceding Gaston, buried in the same church, deserves note for its curious, jingling Latin rhyme:
"Continet hæc fossa Gastonis principis ossa,
Nobilis ac humilis aliis, pulvis sibi vilis,
Subjectis parcens, hastes pro viribus arcens.
Da veniam, Christe, flos militiæ fuit isle,
Et virtute precum, confer sibi gaudia tecum,
Gastonis nomen gratum fert auribus omen,
Mulcet prolatum, dulcescis sæpe relatum,"
Two hundred years afterward, in the tumult of Protestant iconoclasm, Gaston Phoebus's tomb was broken open, its débris sold, piece by piece, and Montgomery's Huguenots derisively kicked the august skull about the streets of Orthez and used it for a bowling-ball:
"They hopped among the weeds and stones,
And played at skittles with his bones."