nomenon has been shown beyond
all question to have many parallels in the annals of medicine.[1400] But
the coincidence was so remarkable that we scarcely wonder that, in the
eyes of many, it partook of a supernatural character.

Thus perished, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, a prince whom fair
natural endowments seemed to have destined to play a creditable, if not a
resplendent part in the history of his period; but whom the evil counsels
and examples of his mother, and the corrupt education which, designedly or
through an unfortunate accident, she had given him, had so depraved, that
his morals were regarded with disgust and reprobation by an age by no
means scrupulously pure.[1401]

[Sidenote: The funeral rites.]

The forty days' funeral rites were performed in honor of the deceased king
with all the detail of pomp customary on such occasions. For forty days,
on a bed of cloth of gold, lay in state the life-like effigy of Charles of
Valois, dressed in crimson and blue satin, and in ermine, with a jewelled
crown upon its head, and with sceptre and other emblems of royalty at its
side. For forty days the service of the king's table remained unchanged,
and the pleasing fiction was maintained that the monarch was yet alive.
The gentlemen in waiting, the cupbearer, the pantler, the carver, and all
the retinue of servants who, as in feudal times, appeared at the royal
meals, discharged each his appointed office with punctilious precision.
Courses of viands were brought on in regular succession, and as regularly
removed from the board. A cardinal or prelate blessed the table before the
empty show of a meal, and rendered thanks at its conclusion. Only at the
close, by the sad repetition of the De profundis, and other psalms
appropriate to funeral occasions, did the pageant differ materially from
many a scene of convivial entertainment in which Charles had taken part.
When the prescribed term of waiting was at length over, the miserable show
ended, the effigy was replaced by the bier, funeral decorations took the
place of festive emblems, and the body of the late king was laid in its
last resting-place.[1402]

[Sidenote: Had persecution, war, and treachery succeeded?]

The courtiers had already turned their eyes from the dead monarch to the
successor whose speedy return from Poland all eagerly awaited. Henry the
Third had already precipitately fled from Cracow, and was on his way to
assume his ancestral throne. He wa