ly," pursues the quaint old chronicler from whom we have just
quoted, "heaven and earth had given us only too many prognostics of what
was to happen to him: it was in the year 1608 that a great eclipse
nearly covered the whole body of the sun; in the preceding year 1607
that the terrible comet appeared; after which some three months or
thereabout we had two earthquakes; then several monsters born in divers
provinces of France; bloody rains that fell at Orleans and at Troyes;
the great plague that afflicted Paris in the past year 1609; the furious
overflowing of the Loire; next the Cure of Montargis found upon the
altar, when he went to celebrate the mass, a scroll by which he was
informed that his Majesty would be killed by a determined blow, and the
said Cure of Montargis carried the paper to the Due de Sully. Several
conspiracies," he goes on to say, "must have been formed against the
life of this good King, since from twenty quarters he received notice of
it. The Pope Paul V sent him a courier express to warn him to be upon
his guard, as very high and powerful ladies and some of the greatest
nobles of his Court were involved in a plot against his life." [422]

What reason the King may have supposed himself to possess for
considering his own death to be consequent upon the coronation of Marie,
or whether he did actually so combine the two events in his own mind, it
were impossible for posterity to decide; but it is at least certain that
Rambure himself is not singular in adducing extraordinary coincidences
and in lending his support to these superstitious terrors, for it is on
record that Cardinal Barberino, who subsequently (in 1623) became Pope
under the title of Urban VIII, and who was, at the period of which we
now write, celebrated for his acquaintance with the occult sciences, as
well as for his skill in astrology, sent a message to the King in the
month of January, by which he cautioned him not to sojourn in any large
city throughout the whole of the year, but more especially during the
months of March, April, May, June, and July; declaring that, should he
disregard the warning, he would be assassinated by an unfrocked monk of
saturnine temperament born in his own kingdom; and adding that he would
do well carefully to ascertain whether any individual answering to this
description were then residing within his dominions, in order that
should such an one be discovered, he might be closely watched; and he,
moreover