Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/524

490 being inflicted. The Pope, irritated at the tone of the Grand-Master’s letter—and indeed it must be admitted that he had expressed himself in no measured terms—was glad of an excuse to avoid receiving the envoy; using the objectionable letter as a pretext, he not only refused him an audience, but dismissed him from the court.

This marked slight deeply affected La Valette. The accumulated troubles which weighed upon him both from within and without the convent overcame the firmness of the gallant old man. He sank into a condition of the most painful despondency, from which it was impossible to rouse him. One day towards the end of July, 1568, with the object of distracting his mind from the anxieties preying upon him, he started on a hawking expedition in the direction of St. Paul’s bay. The powerful summer sun overcame him, and he was brought home suffering from a sunstroke. A. violent fever followed, and after an illness of nearly a month he died on the 21st of August, 1568.

His body was in the first instance placed in the chapel attached to the castle of St. Angelo, but four days later, namely, on the 25th August, his successor having in the meantime been elected, a grand funeral cortege was formed for its transport to a small chapel which he had built and endowed in the city of Valetta, and which was dedicated to Our Lady of Victory. The corpse was placed upon the deck of the great carrack, which, richly decorated and dismasted, was towed in solemn procession by two other galleys draped in black cloth. They bore at the stern the Turkish banners captured during the late siege, and which were now trailed ignominiously in the water. The body having been taken into the Mama Muscetto was there landed when, the procession being reformed by land, it was conveyed with similar solemnities to the place of burial, where it was lowered into the grave amid the lamentations and regrets of all who witnessed the melancholy ceremony.

The memory of La Valette has always been held in the highest veneration by his fraternity. The Order had, during the five centuries of if s existence, enrolled but few who could have the slightest claim to be compared with him in all those