"Dying? the king—my brother!" exclaimed the Queen of Navarre—you rave, girl! he is ill—I know, but"——

"Know you not, madam," interrupted Jocelyne, "what all the city of Paris knows—that the king cannot live long—not many hours, perhaps—that he lies upon his death-bed?"

"Charles—dying! And my mother has concealed it from me!" cried Margaret. "I see through all her designs! she would keep us from his presence, that he bestow not upon my husband, whom he loves, the reins of power at his death. Charles—dying! Then there lies our only hope. If he die, let Henry of Navarre be Regent—he will listen to my prayer—and La Mole is saved. Yes, there lies the only chance. I will to my husband. We may have still time to effect our purpose, and secure the Regency, in these few last hours of the reign."

CHAPTER V.

"O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye;
The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd;
And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail,
Are turned to one thread, one little hair;
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by—
* * *
"All this thou see'st is but a clod,
And module of confounded royalty."
* * *
"But now a king—now thus—
This was now a king, and now is clay."
Shakspeare.

The miserable king lay, indeed, upon his bed of death. He had refused to quit the room which he usually occupied, all encumbered as it was with his favourite hounds, his hunting accoutrements, and these horns, the winding of which had been his favourite amusement, and had contributed so powerfully to affect his lungs, and undermine his constitution. A sort of couch had been prepared for him of mattresses and cushions upon the floor; and upon that rude bed was the emaciated form of the dying monarch extended. To his customary attacks of blood-spitting, had succeeded a strange, and, until then, unknown symptom of malady, from which the very physicians recoiled with horror. Drops of red moisture, which bore all the appearance of blood, had burst, like perspiration, from the pores of the body; and there were moments when the wretched man writhed on his couch in the double anguish of body and mind, that, in spite of the efforts of the physicians to remove this extraordinary appearance, he might have been thought to be bathed in gore.

It was indeed an agony, and a bloody sweat!

The physicians had long since declared that there was no hope. In one of those fitful bursts of anger, in which Charles from time to time indulged, even in his state of exhaustion and in his dying moments, he had desired to be left by his doctors and attendants, and he slumbered his last slumber in this world, before closing his eyes for ever in the great sleep of death, to wake upon another. One person alone sat by the side of his couch; and that person was one, whom the incessant intriguing efforts of his mother would have taught him was his bitterest enemy.

That ivory paleness which had been so characteristic a trait of Charles, and had added at once to the melancholy and majesty of his face, was now of a yellow waxen colour, which might be said to increase from minute to minute in lividness of hue. His large nose stood frightfully prominent from those hollow sunken cheeks; his lips, in life, red almost to bleeding, were now ashy pale. Beneath his thin lids, the eyeballs, sunken into the deep cavities of his eyes, might be seen to roll and palpitate; whilst from his open and distorted mouth burst forth, even in his troubled sleep, moans, and then words of anguish.

The man who sat by his side, listened with varying feelings. Sometimes he started back with a movement of horror; sometimes he again bent forward in compassion, and with a kerchief lightly wiped away that fearful perspiration which burst from the hollow temples of the young man. The aspect of this personage was noble; his forehead was bold; his nose formed with that eagle curve which seems fashioned for command. The expression of his grey eyes denoted both resolution and wariness; whilst a general look of good temper and openness, which amounted almost to insouciance, pervaded the whole face. He was clothed in black. It was Henry of Navarre, the ill-used and betrayed victim of Catherine's policy.