ve all the help in their power in seeing it carried out
without change or omission; then, having read it over, and having
received a promise from all, she gave it to Bourgoin, charging him to
send it to M. de Guise, her chief executor, and at the same time
to forward her letters to the king and her principal papers and
memorandums: after this, she had the casket brought in which she had put
the purses which we mentioned before; she opened them one after
another, and seeing by the ticket within for whom each was intended, she
distributed them with her own hand, none of the recipients being aware
of their contents. These gifts varied from twenty to three hundred
crowns; and to these sums she added seven hundred livres for the poor,
namely, two hundred for the poor of England and five hundred for the
poor of France; then she gave to each man in her suite two rose nobles
to be distributed in alms for her sake, and finally one hundred and
fifty crowns to Bourgoin to be divided among them all when they should
separate; and thus twenty-six or twenty-seven people had money legacies.

The queen performed all this with great composure and calmness, with no
apparent change of countenance; so that it seemed as if she were only
preparing for a journey or change of dwelling; then she again bade her
servants farewell, consoling them and exhorting them to live in peace,
all this while finishing dressing as well and as elegantly as she could.

Her toilet ended, the queen went from her reception-room to her
ante-room, where there was an altar set up and arranged, at which,
before he had been taken from her, her chaplain used to say mass; and
kneeling on the steps, surrounded by all her servants, she began the
communion prayers, and when they were ended, drawing from a golden box a
host consecrated by Pius V, which she had always scrupulously preserved
for the occasion of her death, she told Bourgoin to take it, and, as
he was the senior, to take the priest's place, old age being holy and
sacred; and in this manner in spite of all the precautions taken
to deprive her of it, the queen received the holy sacrament of the
eucharist.

This pious ceremony ended, Bourgoin told the queen that in her will she
had forgotten three people--Mesdemoiselles Beauregard, de Montbrun, and
her chaplain. The queen was greatly astonished at this oversight, which
was quite involuntary, and, taking back her will, she wrote her wishes
with respect to them in t