Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II | Page 5

always loved you. It is to you alone I trust my wife and daughter; earnestly do I recommend them to your care. Do not trust the queen; but God protect you!'
"The queen mother here interrupted him, 'Ah, sir, do not say that!'--'Yes, madam, I must say it; it is the truth. Believe me, my brother; love me; assist my wife and daughter, and implore God for mercy on me. Adieu, my brother, adieu!' The King of Navarre remained till his majesty expired."
The following minute particulars are drawn from the journal of Pierre de L'Etoile. In the simplicity of his narration, so pleasing in the old writers, the nurse and the monarch,--the religious remorse of the one, and the artless consolations of the other,--become interesting objects.
"King Charles, two days before his death, having called for Mazzille, his chief physician, and complaining of the pains he suffered, asked him if it was not possible that he, and so many other celebrated physicians that were in his realms, could give some alleviation to his disorder; 'for I am,' said he, 'cruelly and horridly tormented.' To which Mazzille replied, that whatever had depended on them had been tried, but that in truth God only could be the sovereign physician in such complaints. 'I believe,' said the king, 'that what you say is true, and that you know nothing else. Draw from me my custode (or large cap), that I may try to rest.' Mazzille withdrew, and left orders that all should leave the king except three, viz., La Tour, St. Pris, and his nurse, whom his majesty greatly loved, although she was a Huguenot. As she had just seated herself on a coffer, and began to doze, she heard the king groan bitterly, weeping and sighing; she then approached the bed softly, and drawing away his custode, the king said to her, giving vent to a heavy sigh, and shedding tears plentifully, insomuch that they interrupted his discourse--'Ah! my dear nurse! my beloved woman, what blood! what murders! Ah! I have followed wicked advice! O my God! pardon me, and be merciful. I know not where I am, they have made me so perplexed and agitated. How will all this end!--What shall I do? I am lost for ever! I know it.'--Then the nurse thus addressed him:--'Sire, be the murders on those who forced you to order them; your majesty could not help it, and since you never consented, and now regret them, believe God will never impute them to you, and will cover them with the mantle of justice of his Son, to whom alone you should look for aid. Ah! for the honour of God, let your majesty cease from this weeping.' Having said this, she rose for a handkerchief, for his was drenched with tears: Charles having taken it from her, made a sign that she should retire and leave him to repose."
The dreadful narrative of the massacre of St. Bartholomew is detailed in the history of De Thou; and the same scene is painted in glowing, though in faithful colours, by Voltaire in the Henriade.--Charles, whose last miserable moments we come from contemplating, when he observed several fugitive Huguenots about his palace in the morning after the massacre of 30,000 of their friends, took a fowling-piece, and repeatedly fired at them.
Such was the effect of religion operating, perhaps not on a malignant, but on a feeble mind!

ROYAL PROMOTIONS.
If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.
Chevreau informs us that the Sultan Osman having observed a gardener planting a cabbage with some peculiar dexterity, the manner so attracted his imperial eye that he raised him to an office near his person, and shortly afterwards he rewarded the planter of cabbages by creating him beglerbeg or viceroy of the Isle of Cyprus.
Marc Antony gave the house of a Roman citizen to a cook, who had prepared for him a good supper! Many have been raised to extraordinary preferment by capricious monarchs for the sake of a jest. Lewis XI. promoted a poor priest whom he found sleeping in the porch of a church, that the proverb might be verified, that to lucky men good fortune will come even when they are asleep! Our Henry VII. made a viceroy of Ireland if not for the sake of, at least with a clench. When the king was told that all Ireland could not rule the Earl of Kildare, he said, then shall this earl rule all Ireland.
It is recorded of Henry VIII. that he raised a servant to a considerable dignity because he had taken care to have a roasted boar prepared for him, when his majesty happened to be in the humour of feasting on