The shaft struck the king in the left shoulder. The wound might have
been healed, but unskilful treatment made it mortal. The castle was
taken while Richard lay dying, and every soul in it hanged, as the king
had sworn, except Bertrand de Gourdon. He was brought into the king's
tent, heavily chained.

"Knave!" cried Richard, "what have I done to you that you should take my
life?"

"You have killed my father and my two brothers," answered the youth.
"You would have hanged me. Let me die now, by any torture you will. My
comfort is that no torture to me can save _you_. You, too, must die; and
through me the world is quit of you."

The king looked at him steadily, and with a gleam of clemency in his
eyes.

"Youth," he said, "I forgive you. Go unhurt."

Then turning to his chief captain, he said,--

"Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart."

He fell back on his couch, and in a few minutes was dead, having
signalized his last moments with an act of clemency which had had few
counterparts in his life. His clemency was not matched by his piety. The
priests who were present at his dying bed exhorted him to repentance and
restitution, but he drove them away with bitter mockery, and died as
hardened a sinner as he had lived. It should, however, be said that this
statement of the character of Richard's death, given by the historian