Page:The Queens of England.djvu/216

182 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Poor King Charles ! He was one of those unfortunate per- sonages who seem born expressly to make manifest how much of ingratitude, selfishness, and meanness exist in the majority of mankind. The royal families then departed from Paris, and went to Senlis, where they made some stay. Thence Henry repaired to Compiegne, where, learning that a plot had been formed to betray the city of Paris to the adherents of the dauphin, he hastened to that city and detected and punished the conspira- tors. He then returned to Senlis, where the malady that occasioned his death manifested itself most painfully. Never- theless, he took leave of the King and Queen of France, and of his own consort, and proceeded to Melun in a Utter, in order that he might join his army on the day appointed for a battle between the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy. But he daily grew so much weaker, that he was forced to return to the castle of Vincennes, where Katherine was, and where he terminated his martial and adventurous life. Previous to his dissolution he gave some excellent political advice, which was not adopted. Katherine, who was yet only in her twenty-first . year, in- dulged in violent grief for the loss of her lord, and followed, in great state, the funeral procession from Paris to London. The body of the king was laid in a chariot drawn by four great horses. There was also a figure dressed resembling him, in royal state, in purple and ermine, crowned, and bearing the scepter and globe in its hand. This representation of the great warrior king was placed over the corpse, in a splendid bed in the chariot, and a magnificent canopy was held over it by men of note, and in this state the funeral passed through the various towns till it reached Calais — the King of Scots attending as chief mourner, besides a vast number of nobles and captains of renown, bearing hatchments, and others bear- ing banners. Around the bier were four hundred men-at-arms in block armor and with reversed lances. At a mile's distance followed the queen, with a vast retinue, keeping always within view of the light of the great wax-torches which encompassed the procession. At Dover she was met by fifteen bishops in their pontificial habits, and by a great concourse of mitered abbots and priests, with a vast concourse of people. All the way from Blackheath, and through London, the priests chanted, and the people at their doors, each holding a torch,