desire to have?’ Then he sighed and said: ‘My friend, all this I must leave.’” Before parting from the King, Bassompierre informed him that he had received a complaint from the captains of the Light Cavalry, of which he had recently been appointed Colonel, that their companies were insufficiently armed and that they were unable to obtain the weapons which they required, and begged his Majesty to give orders that these should be supplied to them. Henri IV told him to come to him that afternoon at the Arsenal, where he proposed to go to visit Sully, who was ill, and he would direct the Minister to let him have the arms he wanted. And, upon Bassompierre observing that he would very willingly give Sully at the same time the money which they were worth, to enable him to replace them, he laughingly replied by quoting two verses from a well-known song, which ran: “Que je n’offre à personne, Mais à vous je les donne.” Bassompierre thanked his Majesty, kissed his hand and withdrew, little imagining that he was never to see him alive again. “After dinner,” he says, “I went to visit Descures[80] in the Place-Royale, to inquire about the routes which the different companies [of the Light Horse] were to follow; and then I proceeded to the Arsenal, to await the King, as he had told me to do. But alas! it was in vain, for, shortly afterwards, came people crying out that the King had been wounded, and that he was being carried back to the Louvre. I ran like a madman, seized the first horse I could find, and rode full gallop towards the Louvre. Opposite the Hôtel de Longueville I met M. de Blérencourt,[81] who was returning from the Louvre, and he whispered to me: ‘He is dead!’ I ran up to the barriers which the French Guards and the Swiss had occupied, with lowered pikes, and _Monsieur le Grand_ and I passed under the barriers and ran to the King’s cabinet, where we saw him stretched on his bed, and M. de Vic,[82] Counsellor of State, seated on the same bed. He had put his cross of the Order to the King’s lips, and was bidding him think of God. Melon, his chief physician, was in the _ruelle_, and some surgeons, who wanted to dress his wounds; but he was already gone.... Then the chief physician cried: ‘Ah! it is all over; he has gone!’ _Monsieur le Grand_, on arriving, went down on his knees in the _ruelle_ of the bed, and took one of the King’s hands and kissed it. As for myself, I had thrown myself at his feet, which I embraced, weeping bitterly....” CHAPTER XIII