e knelt by his bedside.

"My brother," said the dying king, "you lose a good master and a good
friend. I know that you are not the cause of the troubles which have
come upon me. If I had believed all which has been told me, you would
not now have been living; but I have always loved you." Then turning
his eyes to the queen mother, he said energetically, "Do not trust
to--" Here Catharine hastily interrupted him, and prevented the
finishing of the sentence with the words "_my mother_."

Charles designated his brother Henry, the King of Poland, as his
successor. He expressed the earnest wish that neither his younger
brother, Francis, the Duke of Alencon, nor Henry, would disturb the
repose of the realm. The next night, as the Cathedral clock was
tolling the hour of twelve, the nurse, who was sitting, with two
watchers, at the bedside of the dying monarch, heard him sighing and
moaning, and then convulsively weeping. Gently she approached the bed
and drew aside the curtains. Charles turned his dimmed and despairing
eye upon her, and exclaimed,

"Oh, my nurse! my nurse! what blood have I shed! what murders have I
committed! Great God! pardon me--pardon me!"

A convulsive shuddering for a moment agitated his frame, his head fell
back upon his pillow, and the wretched man was dead. He died at
twenty-four years of age, expressing satisfaction that he left no heir
to live and to suffer in a world so full of misery. In reference to
this guilty king, Chateaubriand says,

"Should we not have some pity for this monarch of twenty-three years,
born with fine talents, a taste for literature and the arts, a
character naturally generous, whom an execrable mother had tried to
deprave by all the abuses of debauchery and power?"

"Yes," warmly responds G. de Felice, "we will have compassion for him,
with the Huguenots themselves, whose fathers he ordered to be slain,
and who, with a merciful hand, would wipe away the blood which covers
his face to find still something human."

Henry, his brother, who was to succeed him upon the throne, was then
in Poland. Catharine was glad to have the pusillanimous Charles out of
the way. He was sufficiently depraved to commit any crime, without
being sufficiently resolute to brave its penalty. Henry III. had, in
early life, displayed great vigor of character. At the age of fifteen
he had been placed in the command of armies, and in several combats
had defeated the veteran generals of the Protesta