While he remained in the Bastille, he was visited by several of the ministers of State, and cardinals, and men of the Church, who urged him to some discoveries, but could not prevail with him: he spoke, he thought, he dreamed of nothing but Hermione; and when they talked of heaven, he ran on some discourse of that beauty, something of her praise; and so continued to his last moment, even on the scaffold, where, when he was urged to excuse, as a good Christian ought, his invasion, his bloodshed, and his unnatural war, he set himself to justify his passion to Hermione, endeavouring to render the life he had led with her, innocent and blameless in the sight of heaven; and all the churchmen could persuade could make him speak of very little else. Just before he laid himself down on the block, he called to one of the gentlemen of his chamber, and taking out the enchanted tooth-pick- case, he whispered him in the ear, and commanded him to bear it from him to Hermione; and laying himself down, suffered the justice of the law, and died more pitied than lamented; so that it became a proverb, 'If I have an enemy, I wish he may live like----, and die like Cesario': so ended the race of this glorious youth, who was in his time the greatest man of a subject in the world, and the greatest favourite of his prince, happy indeed above a monarch, if ambition and the inspiration of knaves and fools, had not led him to destruction, and from a glorious life, brought him to a shameful death.
This deplorable news was not long in coming to Hermione, who must receive this due, that when she heard her hero was dead, (and with him all her dearer greatness gone) she betook herself to her bed, and made a vow she would never rise nor eat more; and she was as good as her word, she lay in that melancholy estate about ten days, making the most piteous moan for her dead lover that ever was heard, drowning her pillow in tears, and sighing out her soul. She called on him in vain as long as she could speak; at last she fell into a lethargy, and dreamed of him, till she could dream no more; an everlasting sleep closed her fair eyes, and the last word she sighed was Cesario.