--the affairs of this kingdom, which seem well advanced for us, would
become bad." As soon as he had done with politics he bade his doctors
tell him how long he had still to live. One of them knelt down before
his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that,
saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king
summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him
the penitential psalms. When they came to the twentieth versicle of the
_Miserere,--Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem_ (that the walls of Jerusalem
may be built up),--He made them stop. "Ah!" said he, "if God had been
pleased to let me live out my time, I would, after putting an end to the
war in France, reducing the _dauphin_ to submission or driving him out of
the kingdom in which I would have established a sound peace, have gone to
conquer Jerusalem. The wars I have undertaken have had the approval of
all the proper men and of the most holy personages; I commenced them and
have prosecuted them without offence to God or peril to my soul." These
were his last words. The chanting of the psalms was resumed around him,
and he expired on the 31st of August, 1422, at the age of thirty-four. A
great soul and a great king; but a great example also of the boundless
errors which may be fallen into by the greatest men when they pursue with
arrogant confidence their own views, forgetting the laws of justice and
the rights of other men.

On the 22d of October, 1422, less than two months after the death of
Henry V., Charles VI., King of France, died at Paris in the forty-third
year of his reign. As soon as he had been buried at St. Denis, the Duke
of Bedford, regent of France according to the will of Henry V., caused a
herald to proclaim, "Long live Henry of Lancaster, King of England and of
France!" The people's voice made very different proclamation. It had
always been said that the public evils proceeded from the state of
illness into which the unhappy King Charles had fallen. The goodness he