Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/200

 i8o REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.58. called by the Regent in October, and Knox rallied his powers for the last time to preach to them. Du Croq the French ambassador was present; turning to him as a Hebrew prophet might have turned, Knox said, * Go tell your King that sentence has gone out against him, that God's vengeance shall never depart from him nor his house, that his name shall re- main an execration to the posterities to come, and that none that shall come of his loins shall enjoy that king- dom unless he repent/ The prediction was bold, for the Queen of France was pregnant, and the news of the birth of a Dauphin was hourly looked for. Du Croq bade the Regent check the tongue which was reviling an anoint- ed King. The Regent said he might not silence the minister of God, and the ambassador left Edinburgh in anger. Some twenty months later Charles IX. lay dying of haemorrhage he was haunted with hideous dreams ; the darkness was peopled with ghosts which were mocking and mowing at him, and he would start out of his sleep to find himself in a pool of blood blood ever blood. The night before his end, the nurse a Huguenot, heard him sob and sigh. ' Ah ! ' he muttered, my country ; what will become of that ? what will be- come of me ? I am lost I know it but too well.' The nurse told him that the blood would be on the heads of those who had misled him on them and on their ac- cursed counsels. He sighed again, and blessed God that he had left no son to inherit his crown and his infamy. 1 1 MARTIN, Histoire de France.
 * but I was ill-advised. God have mercy on me and on