strange, and, until then, unknown symptom of malady, from
which the very physicians recoiled with horror. Drops of red moisture,
which bore all the appearance of blood, had burst, like perspiration,
from the pores of the body; and there were moments when the wretched man
writhed on his couch in the double anguish of body and mind, that, in
spite of the efforts of the physicians to remove this extraordinary
appearance, he might have been thought to be bathed in gore.

It was indeed an agony, and a bloody sweat!

The physicians had long since declared that there was no hope. In one of
those fitful bursts of anger, in which Charles from time to time
indulged, even in his state of exhaustion and in his dying moments, he
had desired to be left by his doctors and attendants, and he slumbered
his last slumber in this world, before closing his eyes for ever in the
great sleep of death, to wake upon another. One person alone sat by the
side of his couch; and that person was one, whom the incessant
intriguing efforts of his mother would have taught him was his
bitterest enemy.

That ivory paleness which had been so characteristic a trait of Charles,
and had added at once to the melancholy and majesty of his face, was now
of a yellow waxen colour, which might be said to increase from minute to
minute in lividness of hue. His large nose stood frightfully prominent
from those hollow sunken cheeks; his lips, in life, red almost to
bleeding, were now ashy pale. Beneath his thin lids, the eyeballs,
sunken into the deep cavities of his eyes, might be seen to roll and
palpitate; whilst from his open and distorted mouth burst forth, even in
his troubled sleep, moans, and then words of anguish.

The man who sat by his side, listened with varying feelings. Sometimes
he started back with a movement of horror; sometimes he again bent
forward in compassion, and with a kerchief lightly wiped away that
fearful perspiration which burst from the hollow temples of the young
man. The aspect of this personage was noble; his forehead was bold; his
nose formed with that eagle curve which seems fashioned for command. The
expression of his grey eyes denoted both resolution and wariness; whilst
a general look of good temper and openness, which amounted almost to
_insouciance_, pervaded the whole face. He was clothed in black. It was
Henry of Navarre, the ill-used and betrayed victim of Catherine's
policy.

During the whole reign of Charles IX., the Q