His helmet was loosed and the splinter pulled out. It was “of a good bigness,” says the English embassador, who was an eye-witness.[81] “Nothing else was done to him upon the field; but I noted him to be very weak, and to have the feeling of all his limbs almost benumbed; for being carried away as he lay along, nothing covered but his face, he moved neither hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed. There was marvelous great lamentation made for him, and weeping of all sorts, both men and women.” The wound proved more serious than Throckmorton had imagined: Henry never left his bed again. Twice he received the last sacraments of the Church, and calling for his son Francis, “commended the Church and the people to his care.” After an interval of repose--for the exertion of uttering these few words was almost too great for him--he added: “Above all things, remain steadfast in the true faith.”[82] Henry II. died on the 10th of July, leaving behind him four sons, three of whom wore the crown of France. He also left three daughters and a bastard son, Henry of Angoulême, who cruelly distinguished himself at the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Protestants were accused of rejoicing at Henry’s death: they not only made songs upon it, but “offered thanks, or rather blasphemies, to God, daring to say that the Almighty had struck him under the walls of the Bastille, where he detained the innocent in prison.”[83] It is possible that there may be some foundation for this charge, for it requires a great amount of true Christian feeling to make the victims forbear from exulting at the removal of their persecutor by what seems to them the judgment of God. In his dedicatory epistle of the _Psalms done into French Verse_, Beza thus paints the second Henry: Je vois un masque avec sa maigre mine Qui fait trembler les lieux où il chemine. But the “Lutherans” did not tremble: they bore their testimony with Christian resolution, and acted up to the noble lines in the same poem: S’il faut servir au Seigneur de témoins, Mourons, mourons, louans Dieu pour le moins. Au départir de ces lieux misérables, Pour traverser aux cieux tant désirables. _Que les tyrans soient de nous martyrer Plutôt lassés, que nous de l’endurer._