But the sun which shone upon him with such warmth and splendour was now about to be clouded for ever. The tragic end of the first Bourbon King has been so often told that we have no intention of narrating it; but there are circumstances recorded by Bassompierre which are not to be found in the memoirs and correspondence of his contemporaries, and which afford a curious insight into the state of Henri IV’s mind just before his assassination:-- “We now entered that unhappy month of May, fatal to France, by the loss sustained therein of our good King. “I shall relate many things touching the presentiment which the King had before his death, and which gave warning of that event. A little while before, he said to me: ‘I know not how it is, Bassompierre, but I cannot persuade myself that I am going into Germany; neither does my heart tell me that you are going into Italy.’ Several times he said to me, and to others also: ‘I believe that I shall die soon.’ And on the first day of May he returned from the Tuileries by way of the grand gallery, leaning upon M. de Guise on one side, and upon me on the other (for he always leaned on someone), and, on leaving us to enter the Queen’s cabinet, said: ‘Don’t go away; I am going to tell my wife to dress, that she may not keep me waiting for dinner.’ For he usually dined with her. While we waited, leaning on the iron balustrade overlooking the courtyard of the Louvre, the maypole which had been planted in the middle of the courtyard fell down, without being disturbed by the wind or for any apparent cause, and tumbled in the direction of the little staircase leading to the King’s chamber. Upon which I said to M. de Guise: ‘I would have given a great deal rather than this should have happened. It is a very bad omen. May God preserve the King, who is the May of the Louvre!’ ‘How can you be so foolish as to think seriously of such a thing?’ he replied. ‘In Italy and Germany,’ I rejoined, ‘they would take much more account of such an omen than we do here. May God preserve the King and all belonging to him!’ “The King, who had but stepped into the Queen’s cabinet and out again, here came up very softly to listen to us, for he imagined that we spoke of some woman; and, hearing all that I said, broke in upon our talk, saying: ‘You are fools to amuse yourselves with such prognostications. For the last thirty years all the astrologers and charlatans who pretend to be wise have predicted to me every year that I was fated to die; and in that year wherein I shall actually die, all the omens which have occurred in the course of it will be remarked and thought a great deal of, while nothing will be said of those which happened in preceding years.’