mercy upon me, if it may please Thee!  I know not what hath come to me, so bewildered and agitated do they make me.  What will be the end of it all?  What shall I do?  I am lost; I see it well.’  Then said the nurse to him, ’Sir, the murders be on the heads of those who made you do them!  Of yourself, sir, you never could; and since you are not consenting thereto, and are sorry therefor, believe that God will not put them down to your account, and will hide them with the cloak of justice of His Son, to whom alone you must have recourse.  But for God’s sake, let your Majesty cease weeping!’ And thereupon, having been to fetch him a pocket-handkerchief, because his own was soaked with tears, after that the king had taken it from her hand, he signed to her to go away and leave him to his rest.”

On Sunday, May 30, 1574, Whitsunday, about three in the afternoon, Charles IX. expired, after having signed an ordinance conferring the regency upon his mother Catherine, “who accepted it,” was the expression in the letters patent, “at the request of the Duke of Alencon, the King of Navarre, and other princes and peers of France.”  According to D’Aubigne, Charles used often to say of his brother Henry, that, “when he had a kingdom on his hands, the administration would find him out, and that he would disappoint those who had hopes of him.”  The last words he said were, “that he was glad not to have left any young child to succeed him, very well knowing that France needs a man, and that, with a child, the king and the reign are unhappy.”

CHAPTER XXXIV.——­HENRY III.  AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS. (1574-1589.)

[Illustration:  Henry III——­388]

Though elected King of Poland on the 9th of May, 1573, Henry, Duke of Anjou, had not yet left Paris at the end of the summer.  Impatient at his slowness to depart, Charles IX. said, with his usual oath, “By God’s death! my brother or I must at once leave the kingdom:  my mother shall not succeed in preventing it.”  “Go,” said Catherine to Henry; “you will not be away long.”  She foresaw, with no great sorrow one would say, the death of Charles IX., and her favorite son’s accession to the throne of France.  Having arrived in Poland on the 25th of January, 1574, and been crowned at Cracow on the 24th of February, Henry had been scarcely four months King of Poland when he was apprised, about the middle of June, that his brother Charles had lately died, on the 30th of May, and that he was King of France.  “Do not waste your time in deliberating,” said his French advisers; “you must go and take possession of the throne of France without abdicating that of Poland:  go at once and without fuss.”  Henry followed this counsel.  He left Cracow, on the 18th of June, with a very few attendants.  Some Poles were apprehensive of his design, but said nothing about it.  He went a quarter of a league on foot to reach the horses which were awaiting him,