Only a few nights previous to her coronation the Queen suddenly awoke from a profound slumber uttering a piercing shriek and trembling in every limb. Alarmed by her evident state of agony, the monarch, having at length succeeded in restoring her to a state of comparative composure, urged her to explain the cause of her terror, but for a considerable time she refused to yield to his entreaties. Overcome at last, however, by his evident anxiety and uneasiness, she informed him that she had just had a frightful dream, in which she had seen him fall under the knife of an assassin.[428]
Two remarkable coincidences also demand mention, particularly as they occurred at a distance from the capital. On the day of the King's assassination his shield, bearing his blazon, which was attached to the principal entrance of the château of Pau in Béarn, fell heavily to the ground and broke to pieces; while immediately afterwards the cows of the royal herd, which had previously been grazing quietly in the park, began to low in a frightful manner, and suddenly the bull known as the king rushed violently against the gate whence the trophy had fallen and then sprang into the moat, where it was drowned. The effect produced upon the inhabitants of the district was instantaneous; loud and lamentable shouts of "The King is dead!" arose on all sides, and within two hours every Béarnais felt convinced that his beloved monarch had ceased to exist.[429]
It is useless to multiply these strange tales; but it is certain that they did not fail in their effect upon the mind of the monarch, however he might struggle to conceal the feelings which they excited, for Bassompierre relates that during the preparations which were making for the coronation of the Queen, Henry repeatedly alluded to his approaching death with a sadness which evinced his entire belief in the predictions that had reached him.
"I know not wherefore, Bassompierre," he said on one occasion, "but I am persuaded that I shall never again see Germany, nor do I believe that you will go to Italy. I shall not live much longer."
On the 1st of May, when returning from the Tuileries by the great gallery to the Louvre, supported in consequence of his gout by the Duc de Guise and the narrator himself, he said on reaching the door of the Queen's closet to his two attendants, "Wait for me here. I will hasten the toilet of my wife that she may not keep my dinner waiting." He was of course obeyed, and the Duke and Bassompierre, in order to while away the time, walked to the balcony that overhung the court of the Louvre, against which they leant watching what passed below, when suddenly the great hawthorn which occupied the centre of the area swayed for an instant and then fell to the earth with a loud crash in the direction of the King's private staircase without any apparent agency, as not a breath of air was stirring, nor was any one near it at the time.
The impressionable imagination of Bassompierre was deeply moved. "Would," he exclaimed to his companion, "that any sacrifice on my part could have averted so dire a presage as this. God preserve the King!"
"You are mad," was the reply of the Duke, "to connect the fortunes of the King with the fall of a tree."
"It may be so," was the melancholy rejoinder; "but neither in Italy nor in Germany would this circumstance fail to produce alarm. Heaven guard the monarch, and all who are near and dear to him!"
"You are two fools to amuse yourselves with these absurd prognostics," said Henry, who had approached them unheard during their momentary excitement. "For the last thirty years all the astrologers and mountebanks in the kingdom, as well as a host of other impostors, have predicted at given intervals that I was about to die, so that when the time comes some of these prophecies must prove correct and will be quoted as miracles, while all the false ones will be studiously forgotten."
The young nobles received the rebuke in silence; but the inexplicable accident which had just occurred was sufficient in so superstitious an age to arouse the liveliest forebodings in the minds of those by whom it was witnessed.[430]