uble
peace that had at length been concluded between the kingdoms of France
and Spain. The most splendid preparations were made for the
entertainment of the brilliant train of noblemen who came to represent
the dignity of the crown of Spain, and to claim the destined bride of
Philip. The "Hotel des Tournelles"--a favorite palace of more than one
king of France--was magnificently decorated; for in its great hall the
nuptials were appointed to be celebrated. In the broad street of Saint
Antoine, in front of this palace, the lists were erected, and the beauty
and nobility of France viewed, from the windows on either side, the
contest of the most distinguished knights, and applauded their feats of
daring and skill. A few paces farther, and just inside the moat, stood a
frowning pile, whose sombre and repulsive front might have struck a
beholder as being as much out of place as the skeleton at the feast--the
ill-omened Bastile.[713] Five prisoners, immured for their conscientious
boldness in its gloomy dungeons, and awaiting a terrible fate,
distinctly heard, day after day, as the tourney continued, the
inspiriting notes of the clarion and hautboy, deepening by contrast the
horrors of their situation.[714] There was the same incongruity between
the king's pursuit of pleasure and his ferocity. From the festivities,
it is said, he turned aside to order Montgomery to proceed, the very
moment the tourney was over, to the _Pays de Caux_--a hot-bed of the
"Lutheran" heresy--to destroy with the sword the resisting, to put out
the eyes of the suspected, and to torture and burn the guilty.[715] It
was believed, moreover, that he himself would then proceed to the
southern parts of France, and set on foot a rigorous persecution of the
Protestants, with whom those regions swarmed.[716]

The nuptial torches burned not less bright for the gloom overhanging the
despised and abominated Lutherans. But in an instant, as by the touch of
a magician's wand, they were turned into the funereal tapers of Henry
the Second.[717]

[Sidenote: The tournament, June 30, 1559.]

[Sidenote: Henry mortally wounded by Montgomery's lance.]

[Sidenote: His death.]

On the thirtieth of June,[718] when the sports of the day were about
ending, the gay monarch must needs re-enter the lists in person, and
break another lance in honor of Diana of Poitiers, whose colors he wore.
The queen had indeed begged him to avoid, for that day at least, the
dangerous pasti