expected,[1328] was now a man of twenty-three.
But his constitution, never robust, had gained nothing. The violent
exercises to which he had been addicted even as a child, and which, though
princely, had been pronounced dangerous by the ambassador, had been
incessantly practised--the ball, horsemanship, arms--and bodily
feebleness, not strength, had been the result. Other excesses had
contributed to hasten the catastrophe. More than all, if we may believe
the testimony of those who were familiar with the young monarch's later
life, the mental and moral experience of the last eighteen months left
their impress on his physical system. Charles, with the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day, had lost all the elasticity of youth. Remorse for
complicity in the crime then perpetrated co-operated with the persuasion
of the uselessness and complete failure of the attempt to exterminate the
Huguenots, and the consciousness of having incurred the indelible mark of
hatred and detestation of an impartial posterity. Even in his sleeping
hours the curse of the murdered victims pursued him and disturbed his
rest. Neither by day nor by night could he banish the remembrance of the
time when blood ran so freely in the streets of Paris.

No attentive observer could doubt that the end was drawing near. The court
had gone no farther on its way to Lorraine than the little town of
Vitry-le-Francais, on the river Marne, when Charles fell so seriously ill
as to be unable to prosecute his journey. As was usual in such cases,
while the physicians alleged as a sufficient explanation of the attack the
king's immoderate exercise in the chase and in blowing the trumpet, the
more suspicious frequenters of the court and the credulous people did not
hesitate to invent the story that he had been poisoned. But by whom the
crime had been committed was not settled. Some ascribed it to Catharine,
others to Henry of Anjou, while others still laid the guilt at the door of
a person of less note, whose honor the licentious king had offended.[1329]

[Sidenote: Project of an English match renewed.]

Meanwhile, neither the monarch's feeble health, nor the journeying of the
court, interrupted the prosecution of those diplomatic intrigues from
which Catharine still looked for valuable results. The election of Henry
to the Polish crown left but one of her sons upon whom the regal dignity
had not been conferred. The prophecy of Nostradamus might have its
complete fulfilme