Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/212

Rh Boulogne. There was no time to dig graves for the dead. With a terrible sang froid the sick were laid together in thatched huts outside the camp; and then, when all were dead, the walls and roofs were battered down over the corpses, and this was all their burial. No wonder that the dreadful sickness spread throughout the country. Having arrived at Forêt-Moutier, a little town close to Abbeville, the young Duke of Orleans was not pleased with the quarters allotted to him for the night. In the same house he found a finer suite of rooms, and was about to establish himself in them, when the host, in great alarm, begged him to go back to his old lodging, for, in the rooms which he had chosen, several people had lately died of the plague. "Well and good!" cried Charles. "Never a son of France has died of the pest!" And, laughing at the horror of his host, the madcap youth called to his companions to come and show how little he was afraid. The wild young nobles drew their swords, and, tossing on their rapiers the infected pillow of the bed, they played at ball, till the feathers flew all over the room, and covered the rash players as with snow. Aghast the host looked on in the doorway.

When night came on, the young Duke retired to rest in this infected chamber. About two hours later, he awoke with violent thirst and pains in the head and limbs. "I am ill," he cried. "It is the plague, and I shall die." He then asked for a glass of water. For two or three days he lay in thirst, in pain and delirium; Francis lay in another chamber of that house, ill with anxiety and fatigue. But, on the third day, the Duke recovered consciousness, and earnestly requested to see his father. The message was taken, and Francis rose from his bed and declared that he would go. The