lady had made the proposition, and he was told to be of good cheer: But
he refused to be comforted. He was slightly acquainted with the gentle-
woman, he observed; and doubted much whether her request would be
granted. Moreover if contemporary chronicle can be trusted he even
expressed a preference for the scaffold, as the milder fate of the two.
The lady, however, not being aware of those uncomplimentary sentiments,
made her proposal to the magistrates, but was dismissed with harsh
rebukes. She had need be ashamed, they said; of her willingness to take
a condemned traitor for her husband. It was urged, in her behalf, that
even in the cruel Alva's time, the ancient custom had been respected,
and that victims had been saved from the executioners, on a demand in
marriage made even by women of abandoned character. But all was of no
avail. The prisoners were executed on the 26th October, the same day
on which the sentence had been pronounced. The heads of Volmar and Cosmo
were exposed on one of the turrets of the city. That of Maulde was
interred with his body.

The Earl was indignant when he heard of the event. As there had been no
written proof of his complicity in the conspiracy, the judges had thought
it improper to mention his name in the sentences. He, of course, denied
any knowledge of the plot, and its proof rested therefore only on the
assertion of the prisoners themselves, which, however, was
circumstantial, voluntary, and generally believed!

France, during the whole of this year of expectation, was ploughed
throughout its whole surface by perpetual civil war. The fatal edict of
June, 1585, had drowned the unhappy land in blood. Foreign armies,
called in by the various contending factions, ravaged its-fair territory,
butchered its peasantry, and changed its fertile plains to a wilderness.
The unhappy creature who wore the crown of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet,