For nine successive days, laying aside all tokens of her
royal rank, simply clad, and with uncovered face, she walked barefooted,
and accompanied by a large number of poor boys and girls, from the wood of
Vincennes, where the court still lingered, to the city of Paris. After
devoutly praying for the king's recovery at the Sainte-Chapelle and at the
shrine of Notre Dame, she returned from her pilgrimage in the same painful
and humble manner, her ladies and the officers of her court following at a
respectful distance.[1393]

Upon Sorbin, the king's confessor, devolved the duty of administering to
Charles the last rites of religion--Sorbin, who was accustomed to speak of
the perfidy and cruelty of the massacre as true magnanimity and
gentleness. It has been well remarked that, in all the dark drama of guilt
and retribution upon which the curtain was about to fall, no part is more
tragic than the scene in which the last words preparing the soul for
judgment were spoken by such a confessor as Sorbin to such a penitent as
Charles.[1394] Under such spiritual guidance the unhappy boy-king may
possibly have expressed the sentiment which the priest ascribes to him at
the hour of death: that his greatest regret was that he had not seen the
Reformation wholly crushed.[1395]

On Sunday, May the thirtieth, 1574, the festival of Pentecost, Charles
died, late in the afternoon.[1396] Almost his last words had been of
congratulation that he left no son to inherit the throne, since he knew
very well that France had need of a man, and that under a child both king
and kingdom were wretched.[1397]

[Sidenote: Death of Charles.]

The general usage was not violated in the present instance. Charles, like
a host of prominent princes and statesmen of the sixteenth century, was
currently reported to have fallen a victim to the poisoner's art, then in
its prime. Nor did the examination made after his death, though clearly
proving that the event had a natural cause, suffice to clear away the
unhappy impression.[1398] The Huguenots had, perhaps, more reason than
others to regard the circumstances attending it as strange, if not
miraculous. That the king, whose guilty acquiescence in the murderous
scheme of Catharine, Anjou, and Guise, had deluged his realm in blood,
should himself have perished of a malady that caused blood to exude from
every pore in his body,[1399] was certainly sufficiently singular to
arrest the attention of the world. The phe