le she sank by her lover's headless corpse, and with a last
dying effort she said to the horrified headsman: "Let me share his
grave! Henry Howard, in life and in death I am with thee!"

CHAPTER XXXIII. NEW INTRIGUES.

Henry Howard was dead; and now one would have thought the king might
be satisfied and quiet, and that sleep would no longer flee from his
eyelids, since Henry Howard, his great rival, had closed his eyes
forever; since Henry Howard was no longer there, to steal away his
crown, to fill the world with the glory of his deeds, to dim the genius
of the king by his own fame as a poet.

But the king was still dissatisfied. Sleep still fled from his couch.

The cause of this was that his work was only just half done. Henry
Howard's father, the Duke of Norfolk, still lived. The cause of this
was, that the king was always obliged to think of this powerful rival;
and these thoughts chased sleep from his eyelids. His soul was sick of
the Howards; therefore his body suffered such terrible pains. If the
Duke of Norfolk would close his eyes in death, then would the king
also be able to close his again in refreshing sleep! But this court of
peers--and only by such a court could the duke be judged--this court of
peers was so slow and deliberate! It worked far less rapidly, and
was not near so serviceable, as the Parliament which had so quickly
condemned Henry Howard. Why must the old Howard bear a ducal title? Why
was he not like his son, only an earl, so that the obedient Parliament
might condemn him?

That was the king's inextinguishable grief, his gnawing pain, which made
him raving with fury and heated his blood, and thereby increased the
pains of his body.

He raved and roared with impatience. Through the halls of his palace
resounded his savage vituperation. It made every one tremble and quake,
for no one was sure that it was not he that was to fall that day
a victim to the king's fury. No one could know whether the king's
ever-increasing thirst for blood would not that day doom him.

With the most jealous strictness the king, from his sick-couch, watched
over his royal dignity; and the least fault against that might arouse
his wrath and bloodthirstiness. Woe to those who wanted still to
maintain that the pope was the head of the Church! Woe to those who
ventured to call God the only Lord of the Church, and honored not the
king as the Church's holy protector! The one, like the other, were
traitors an