The fall of Rouen was followed within a few weeks by the death of the King
of Navarre. His painful wound was not, perhaps, necessarily mortal, but
the restless and vainglorious prince would not remain quiet and allow it
to heal. He insisted on being borne in a litter through the breach into
the city which had been taken under his nominal command. It was a sort of
triumphal procession, marching to the sound of cymbals, and with other
marks of victory. But the idle pageant only increased the inflammation in
his shoulder. Even in his sick-room he allowed himself no time for serious
thought; but, prating of the orange-groves of Sardinia which he was to
receive from the King of Spain, and toying with Rouhet, the beautiful maid
of honor by whom Catharine had drawn him into her net, he frittered away
the brief remnant of an ignoble life. When visibly approaching his end, he
is said, at the suggestion of an Italian physician, to have confessed
himself to a priest, and to have received the last sacraments of the
Romish Church. Yet, with characteristic vacillation he listened, but a few
hours later, with attention and apparent devoutness, to the reading of
God's Word, and answered the remonstrances of his faithful Huguenot
physician by the assurance that, if he recovered his health, he would
openly espouse the Augsburg Confession, and cause the pure Gospel to be
preached everywhere throughout France.[181] His death occurred on the
seventeenth of November, 1562, at Les Andelys, a village on the Seine. He
had insisted, contrary to his friends' advice, upon being taken by boat
from Rouen to St. Maur-des-Fosses, where, within a couple of leagues of
Paris, he hoped to breathe a purer air; but death overtook him before he
had completed half his journey.[182]

Had Antoine embraced with sincerity and steadfastly maintained either of
the two phases of religious belief which divided between them the whole of
western Christendom, his death would have left a void which could have
been filled with difficulty. He was the first prince of the blood, and
entitled to the regency. His appearance was prepossessing, his manners
courteous. He was esteemed a capable general, and was certainly not
destitute of administrative ability. If, with hearty devotion, he had
given himself to the reformed views, the authority of his great name and
eminent position might have secured for their adherents, if not triumph,
at least toleration and quiet. But two cap