me; she had been terrified, so she said, by one of those
strangely vivid dreams that wear, after the event, so much of the guise
of prophetic sight.[719] But Henry made light of her fears, and closed
his ears to her warning. His choice of an antagonist fell upon
Montgomery, captain of his Scottish archers; and although the latter
begged leave to decline the perilous honor, the king refused to excuse
him.[720] At the appointed signal, the knights rode rapidly to the rude
encounter. But Henry's visor was not proof against the lance of
Montgomery, and either broke or was unclasped in the shock. The lance
itself was splintered by the blow, and the piece which Montgomery, in
his surprise and fright, had neglected instantly to lower, entering
above the monarch's eye, penetrated far toward the brain.[721] Rescued
from falling, but covered with blood, the wounded prince was hastily
stripped of his armor, amid the loud lamentations of the horror-stricken
spectators, and borne into the magnificent saloon of the _Palais des
Tournelles_. Here, after lingering a few days, he died on the tenth of
July.

It was a month, to the hour, since Henry's visit to parliament.[722]

The body was laid out in state in the very room appointed for the
nuptial balls. A splendidly wrought tapestry representing the conversion
of St. Paul hung near the remains, but the words, "Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me?" embroidered upon it, admitted too pointed an
application, and the cloth was soon put out of sight.[723] The public,
however, needed no such pictorial reminder. The persecutor had been
stopped as suddenly in his career of blood as the young Pharisee near
Damascus. But it may be doubted whether the eyes with which he had sworn
to see Anne du Bourg burned beheld such a vision of glory as blinded the
future apostle's vision. It is more than probable, indeed, that Henry
never spoke after receiving the fatal wound;[724] although the report
obtained that, as he was carried from the unfortunate tilting-ground, he
turned his bleeding face toward the prison in which the parliament
counsellors were languishing, and expressed fear lest he had wronged
them--a suggestion which the Cardinal of Lorraine hastened to answer by
representing it as a temptation of the Prince of Evil.[725]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: "La Facon de Geneve"--the Huguenot service.]

The charge of having prayed, or administered the sacrament of