The Chancellor L’Hopital and five judges were appointed as a commission to try Condé in prison, and although he refused to plead before them, it availed him nothing. This protest and such answers as he did make having been laid before the king in council, the prince was found guilty of high treason, and condemned to lose his head. But before the sentence could be carried out, great changes took place in France. About the middle of November the king, whose health had never been very robust, “felt himself somewhat evil-disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears.”[154] He rapidly grew worse; all means of relief were tried, but tried in vain. He was suffering from internal abscess. While he lay between life and death, the Guises made a desperate effort to get rid of the only antagonist whom they really feared. They urged Catherine to make away with their common enemy before it was too late; but Catherine, knowing that, in the strife of parties, the enemy of Guise must be a friend to her, refused to do any thing without consulting the chancellor. L’Hopital found the queen “weeping among her women, who surrounded her in deep silence, their eyes fixed on the ground.” It did not give him much trouble to show the illegality as well as the impolicy of the proposed act, and Condé was saved. On the 5th of December Francis II. expired in great agony, and as it was part of the popular faith to believe that no great personage could die a natural death, Ambrose Paré, the famous surgeon, was accused of poisoning the youthful king by pouring “a leporous distillment” into his ear, by command of the queen-mother.[155] Coligny, as one of the chief officers of the crown, had the melancholy charge of watching the dying king, and did not leave the bedside until Francis had breathed his last. Then--turning to the courtiers who were present, and who had gathered round the Duke of Guise--he said, with the pious gravity that was natural to him: “Gentlemen, the king is dead; let that teach us how to live.” Returning to his quarters as soon as he could leave the king’s chamber, he sat in deep thought before the fire, his tooth-pick, as usual, in his mouth, and his feet on the embers. Fontaine, one of his suite, observing his abstraction, caught him by the arm: “Sir, you have been wool-gathering enough. You have burned your boots.” “Ah! Fontaine,” replied the admiral, “only a week ago you and I would have thought ourselves well off with the loss of a leg each, and now we have only lost a pair of boots. It is a good exchange.”