or it was the most beautiful that
I ever heard tell of."

So passed away a man who lived fully up to the principles of chivalry,
and whose honesty, modesty, sympathy, and valor have given him undying
fame. His name survives as an example of what chivalry might have been
had man been as Christian in nature as in name, but of what it rarely
was, except in theory.

The next picture we shall draw belongs to the date of February 24, 1525.
Francis I. had for months been besieging Pavia. Bourbon came to its
relief. A battle followed, which at first seemed to favor the French,
but which Bourbon's skill soon turned in favor of the Imperialists.
Seeing his ranks breaking on all sides, Francis, inspired by fury and
despair, desperately charged the enemy with such knights and men-at-arms
as he could get to follow him. The conflict was fierce and fatal. Around
the king fell his ablest warriors,--Marshal de Foix, Francis of
Lorraine, Bussy d'Amboise, La Tremoille, and many others. At sight of
this terrible slaughter, Admiral Bonnivet, under the king the leader of
the French host, exclaimed, in accents of despair, "I can never survive
this fearful havoc." Raising the visor of his helmet, he rushed
desperately forward where a tempest of balls was sweeping the field, and
in a moment fell beside his slain comrades.

Francis fought on amid the heaps of dead and dying, his soul filled with
the battle rage, his heart burning with fury and desperation. He was
wounded in face, arms, and legs, yet still his heavy sword swept right
and left, still men fell before his vigorous blows. His horse, mortally
wounded, sank under him, dragging him down. In an instant he was up
again, laying about him shrewdly. Two Spaniards who pressed him closely
fell before the sweep of that great blade. Alone among his foes he
fought on, a crowd of hostile soldiers around him. Who he was they knew
not, but his size, strength, and courage, the golden lilies which
studded his coat of mail, the plume of costly feathers which waved from
his helmet, told them that this must be one of the greatest men in the
French array.

Despite the strength and intrepid valor of the king, his danger was
increasing minute by minute, when the Lord of Pomperant, one of
Bourbon's intimate friends, pressed up through the mass and recognized
the warrior who stood like a wounded lion at bay amid a pack of wolves.

"Back! back!" he cried, springing forward, and beating off the soldiers
w