King Charles was not with his sweetheart in her death, but he grieved and rocked himself in woe. “Because she was what she was,” he sobbed, “for that I mourn.” He hastened to Jumièges, and with every mark of sincere affection he assisted in placing his Agnes in her coffin. Her heart he had enclosed in a costly gold vase, which he carried about with him wherever he went, and when he died it was deposited by his command beneath a black marble slab in front of the high-altar of Jumièges, with the simple epitaph: “Agnes Seurelle--Dame de Breauté.” Fair Agnes’s body, still comely in death, was ultimately translated by Charles to Loches, and interred in the basement of the King’s Apartments. Her tomb, surmounted by a statue, was erected by her royal lover. Upon a block marble bed reclines a white marble effigy of “_la Belle des Belles_,” evidently sculptured after life. The fascinating features with her sweet smile are beautifully chiselled, and the graceful figure lightly covered by a long chemise admirably exhibits her exquisitely-proportioned form. Agnes, in a will she made a year before her death, directed that her body should rest at Jumièges, and she bequeathed 1,000 _écus d’or_ (= £500) to the monastery for Masses for the rest of her soul. She had for years been a munificent benefactress to the clergy of the abbey. When Charles had joined his sweetheart in the Paradise of Love, the ungrateful monks were desirous of removing Agnes’s heart and its memorial tablet, on the score that she had led an immoral life; but Louis XI., in spite of his fierce hatred of his father’s mistress, reproved the religious, and warned them that, if they determined to cast out her remains, they must also divest themselves of the gifts and legacies of their patroness. “If you,” the new King said, “disturb her ashes, I shall expect you to hand over to me the gold _écus_.” Needless perhaps to say, the worldly-wise Canons kept the money and the heart. The death of Agnes Sorel had a terrible effect upon the subsequent life of Charles the King. She and Queen Marie between them had managed to keep him free from amorous imbroglios, but now, with only his wife’s protestations to guard him, he gave way to immoderate indulgences, and he, to quote the French,--“_enlardit sa vie de tenir males femmes en son hostel!_” III.