"O Lord, Thou knowest. All the way is of Thine ordering, all guided by wisdom that never erreth, by love that never waxeth faint. I will trust Thy wisdom to devise, and Thy love to effect. Father in Heaven! let me not faint under Thy correction, neither let me despise Thy chastening. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, be merciful unto me! And Thou (not I) knowest best how and when I need Thy mercy. Hear (and if need be, forgive) the cry which echoes in mine heart for ever--`If it be possible,' give us back our darling!" The great Emperor Charles the Fifth died on the 21st of September in this year, in the monastery of San Yuste, whither he went to "make his salvation" in his old age. "I trust," said Isoult, when she heard it, "that he repented him, among other sins, of his ill-using of his mother. There shall doubtless be many masses for him here." "_Il faut beaucoup prier_!" said Marguerite Rose, drily. The end was at hand now. The eventful November of 1558 had set in. Philippa told Isoult that the Queen suffered fearfully. She sat many days on the floor of her chamber, her knees higher than her head. The pain in her head was dreadful; and people began to say that she, who was originally accounted merciful, had been merciful all through, for that others had given orders for the burnings, and she, even in sceptring the Acts, had scarcely known what she did. The last time that she went to the House of Lords, she was too ill to walk, but was borne by her gentlemen in waiting to the throne. James Basset told his sister, that "he counted all burned or beheaded in the Queen's reign had not suffered so much, body nor soul, as she." James Basset, who had been ailing for some time, grew worse on the 16th, when the Queen and the Cardinal were both so ill, that it was thought doubtful which of them would die the sooner. All matters of state, and many of business, were held as it were in the air, waiting the Queen's death. Many of the Council had already set forth for Hatfield. "That should not like me," said Isoult, "were I either the dying sister or the living." And she who lay in that palace of White Hall must have known (if she were not beyond knowing anything) that round her grave would be no mourners--that she had done little to cause England to weep for her, and much to cause rejoicing that she could harm England no more. Did she know that men without were naming the day Hope Wednesday, because every hour they expected news of her end? "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long live the Queen! Yea, may the Queen live for ever!"