aughter to England's burly and
brutal old tyrant, and declined the regal alliance. The exasperated
monarch, in revenge, declared war against France. Years of violence
and blood lingered away. At last Claude, aged and infirm, surrendered
to that king of terrors before whom all must bow. In his strong castle
of Joinville, on the twelfth of April, 1550, the illustrious,
magnanimous, blood-stained duke, after a whole lifetime spent in
slaughter, breathed his last. His children and his grandchildren were
gathered around the bed of the dying chieftain. In the darkness of
that age, he felt that he had been contending, with divine approval,
for Christ and his Church. With prayers and thanksgivings, and
language expressive of meekness and humility before God, he ascended
to that tribunal of final judgment where there is no difference
between the peasant and the prince.

The chivalrous and warlike Francis inherited his father's titles,
wealth, and power; and now the house of Guise was so influential that
the king trembled in view of its rivalry. It was but the kingly office
alone which rendered the house of Valois superior to the house of
Guise. In illustration of the character of those times, and the
hardihood and sufferings through which the renown of these chieftains
was obtained, the following anecdote may be narrated.

Francis, Duke of Guise, in one of the skirmishes with the English
invaders, received a wound which is described as the most severe from
which any one ever recovered. The lance of an English officer "entered
above the right eye, declining toward the nose, and piercing through
on the other side, between the nape and the ear." The weapon, having
thus penetrated the head more than half a foot, was broken off by the
violence of the blow, the lance-iron and two fingers' breadth of the
staff remaining in the dreadful wound. The surgeons of the army,
stupefied by the magnitude of the injury, declined to attempt the
extraction of the splinter, saying that it would only expose him to
dreadful and unavailing suffering, as he must inevitably die. The king
immediately sent his surgeon, with orders to spare no possible
efforts to save the life of the hero. The lance-head was broken off so
short that it was impossible to grasp it with the hand. The surgeon
took the heavy pincers of a blacksmith, and asked the sufferer if he
would allow him to make use of so rude an instrument, and would also
permit him to place his foot up