Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

of any original vigor it ever possessed by the
vicious indulgences in which he lived, and into
which his mother, for her own vile ends, had drawn
him; and now his decline was accelerated by the
agonies of remorse -- thee Nemesis of the St.
Bartholomew. Charles was rapidly approaching the
grave. It was now that a malady of a strange and
frightful kind seized upon him. Blood began to
ooze from all the pores of his body. On awakening
in the morning his person would be wet all over
with what appeared a sweat of blood, and a
crimson mark on the bed-clothes would show
where he had lain. Mignet and other historians
have given us most affecting accounts of the king's
last hours, but we content ourselves with an extract
from the old historian Estoile. And be it known that
the man who stipulated orders for the St.
Bartholomew Massacre that not a single Huguenot
should be left alive to reproach him with the deed,
was waited upon on his death-bed by a Huguenot
nurse! "As she seated herself on a chest," says
Estoile, "and was beginning to doze, she heard the
king moan and weep and sigh. She came gently to
his bedside, and adjusting the bed-clothes, the king
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