'The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health. You have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles; but I forgive you all, and pray God to do likewise. I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.'[251] The queen, therefore, sought to bid farewell of him who had wrought her so much evil. Henry was moved, and even shed tears,[252] but did not comply with the queen's wish: his conscience reproached him with his faults. On the 7th January Catherine received the last sacraments, and at two o'clock she expired. Anne felt at the bottom of her heart the rights of this princess. She had yielded to her imagination, to the absolute will of the king; her marriage had given her some moments of happiness, but her soul was often troubled. She thought to herself that the proud Spanish woman was the one to whom Henry had given his faith; and doubted whether the crown did not belong to the daughter of Isabella. Catherine's death removed her anxieties. 'Now,' she said, 'now I am indeed a queen.' She went into mourning, but according to the custom in France at that period. The tears of the people accompanied to the tomb that unhappy and (to say truth) superstitious woman; but she was an affectionate mother, a high-spirited wife, and a queen of indomitable pride.[253] This decease was destined to effect great changes in Europe. The emperor, who was forming a holy alliance to replace his aunt on the throne, and who, to succeed, had gone so far as to sacrifice the northern part of Italy, having nothing more to do with Catherine, sheathed his sword and kept Milan. Francis I., vexed at seeing the prey slip from him which he had so eagerly coveted, and fancied already in his hands, went into a furious passion, and prepared for a war to the death. The emperor and the king of France, instead of marching together against Henry, began each of them to court him, desiring to have him for an ally in the fierce struggle that was about to begin. At the same time Catherine's death facilitated, as we have said, the alliance of the king with the protestants of Germany, who had maintained the validity of his marriage with the princess of Aragon. One of their chief grievances against Henry VIII. had thus disappeared. Both sides now thought they could make a step forward and strive to come to an understanding theologically. The points on which they differed were important. 'The king of England,' they said at Wittemberg, 'wishes to be pope in the place of the pope, and maintains most of the errors of the old popery, such as monasteries,[254] indulgences, the mass, prayers for the dead, and other Romish fables.'[255] [Sidenote: DISCUSSION AT WITTEMBERG.]