The short winter’s day was closing fast when the battle commenced, and an hour of bloody strife followed. The result was fatal to the gallant old veteran, whose resolution and bravery led him to push forward into the midst of the Huguenot ranks. Five times was he wounded, yet still fought on, and then received the mortal stroke, and was left, stretched, amid the dead and dying, on the field. Still living, though suffering deadly agony, he was borne back within those walls he had left in so different a manner but a few hours before. The night was dark and rainy, his pains were grievous, and he desired to breathe his last where he lay; but those around intreated that he would suffer himself to be carried to Paris, where he died on the following day, preserving to the last a surprising fortitude and endurance. The court ordered a magnificent funeral for the grim old warrior, whose rugged and austere manners had rendered him so obnoxious to many, and whose religious bigotry was but too much in accordance with the spirit of his times. At his own request he was buried at his favourite estate at Écouen, where Palissy had so long wrought in his service. To Bernard he had proved a generous patron and a steady friend, and his hand had been outstretched to save him from the gallows. Would that this had been done from a higher motive than the love of art! Then he might one day have been among the number of those to whom shall be addressed the joyful words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Happily, it is not necessary for this narrative to dwell upon the well-known story of the massacre. Its fearful horrors are but too familiar to every reader of history. Bernard escaped being an eyewitness of them, as he happened to be at the time occupied about one of those commissions to which we have alluded, and which had carried him to Chaulnes, where he laid out the park according to a plan resembling that he described in his “Delectable Garden.”