Renard, grateful to Cholmondeley for saving his life, secured his pardon.
Cicely also returned to the side of Lady Jane Grey, and watched the splendid fortitude and unswerving courage with which her unfortunate mistress prepared for the scaffold. The day before her death her wish that Cicely and Cuthbert should be united was granted, and they were married in her presence by Master John Bradford, Prebendary of St. Paul's.
At last Monday, the twelfth of February, 1544, dawned, and Lady Jane Grey was led out to the scaffold. On the way she passed the headless corpse of Lord Guildford, being borne to the grave. Cicely accompanied the beautiful girl to the last. It was her hands that helped her to remove her attire and that tied the handkerchief over those eyes which were never to look on the world again.
Blindfolded, Jane groped for the block, crying, "What shall I do? Where is it?"
She was guided to the place, and, laying her head on the block, cried, "Lord--into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"
The axe then fell, and one of the fairest and wisest heads that ever sat on human shoulders fell also.
[HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN]
[The Improvisatore]
Hans Christian Andersen was born at Odense, in Denmark, on April 2, 1805, the son of a poor bootmaker. His life was full of exciting incidents; his early years in particular constitute a record of hard struggle, poverty and lack of recognition. When nine he tried his hand at tragedy and comedy, and was sent, after his father's death in 1819, to Copenhagen, where he engaged in various occupations with little success, until his talents attracted the attention of a few influential personages, who provided him with the means for continuing his studies. He won considerable reputation with some early poems, and was quite well known to the public before he entered the university in 1828. He next published a satirical story, and after a journey in Italy, his famous novel, "The Improvisatore," which gave him an opportunity for a brilliant series of word-pictures describing the life and character of the parts of Italy he had visited. Apart from his world-famous fairy tales, by which he set no great store, being ambitious of fame as a novelist, he wrote several successful plays, epic poems and novels. His fairy tales have been translated practically into every language. Hans Andersen died at the age of seventy, in Copenhagen, on August 4, 1875.