of their share in the crime. The
Prince had enjoined from his sick bed, however, that the case should be
conducted with strict regard to justice, and, when the execution could no
longer be deferred, he had sent a written request, by the hands of Saint
Aldegonde, that they should be put to death in the least painful manner.
The request was complied with, but there can be no doubt that the
criminals, had it not been made, would have expiated their offence by the
most lingering tortures. Owing to the intercession of the man who was to
have been their victim, they were strangled, before being quartered, upon
a scaffold erected in the market-place, opposite the Town House. This
execution took place on Wednesday, the 28th of March.

The Prince, meanwhile, was thought to be mending, and thanksgivings began
to be mingled with the prayers offered almost every hour in the churches;
but for eighteen days he lay in a most precarious state. His wife hardly
left his bedside, and his sister, Catharine Countess of Schwartzburg, was
indefatigable in her attentions. The Duke of Anjou visited him daily, and
expressed the most filial anxiety for his recovery, but the hopes, which
had been gradually growing stronger, were on the 5th of April exchanged
for the deepest apprehensions. Upon that day the cicatrix by which the
flow of blood from the neck had been prevented, almost from the first
infliction of the wound, fell off. The veins poured forth a vast
quantity of blood; it seemed impossible to check the haemorrhage, and all
hope appeared to vanish. The Prince resigned himself to his fate, and
bade his children "good night for ever," saying calmly, "it is now all
over with me."

It was difficult, without suffocating the patient, to fasten a bandage
tightly enough to staunch the wound, but Leonardo Botalli, of Asti, body
physician of Anjou, was nevertheless fortunate enough to devise a simple
mechanical expedient, which proved successful. By his advice; a
succession of attendants, relieving each other day and night, prevented
the flow of blood by keeping the orifice of the wound slightly but firmly
compressed with the thumb. After a period of anxious expectation, the
wound again closed; and by the end of the month the Prince was
convalescent. On the 2nd of May he went to offer thanksgiving in the
Great Cathedral, amid the joyful sobs of a vast and most earnest throng.

The Prince, was saved, but unhappily the murderer had yet found an
i