his
antagonist, that the bars of the visor gave way. The lance splintered; a
fragment struck the king with such violence on the temple as to lay bare
the eye. The unhappy monarch reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen
but for the assistance of the constable, the duke of Guise, and other
nobles, who bore him in their arms senseless from the lists. Henry's
wound was mortal. He lingered ten days in great agony, and expired on
the ninth of July, in the forty-second year of his age, and the
thirteenth of his reign. It was an ill augury for the nuptials of
Elizabeth.[278]

The tidings of the king's death were received with demonstrations of
sorrow throughout the kingdom. He had none of those solid qualities
which make either a great or a good prince. But he had the showy
qualities which are perhaps more effectual to secure the affections of a
people as fond of show as the nation whom Henry governed.[279] There
were others in the kingdom, however,--that growing sect of the
Huguenots,--who looked on the monarch's death with very different
eyes,--who rejoiced in it as a deliverance from persecution. They had
little cause to rejoice. The sceptre passed into the hands of a line of
imbecile princes, or rather of their mother, the famous Catherine de
Medicis, who reigned in their stead, and who ultimately proved herself
the most merciless foe the Huguenots ever encountered.

CHAPTER IX.

LATTER DAYS OF CHARLES THE FIFTH.

Charles at Yuste.--His Mode of Life.--Interest in Public
Affairs.--Celebrates his Obsequies.--Last Illness.--Death and Character.

1556-1558.

While the occurrences related in the preceding chapter were passing, an
event took place which, had it happened earlier, would have had an
important influence on the politics of Europe, and the news of which,
when it did happen, was everywhere received with the greatest interest.
This event was the death of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in his
monastic retreat at Yuste. In the earlier pages of our narrative, we
have seen how that monarch, after his abdication of the throne, withdrew
to the Jeronymite convent among the hills of Estremadura. The reader may
now feel some interest in following him thither, and in observing in
what manner he accommodated himself to the change, and passed the
closing days of his eventful life. The picture I am enabled to give of
it will differ in some respects from those of former historians, who
wrote when the Archives of S