The king being in such great glory in relation to this world, and in such a good mind as to God, on the 7th of April, 1498, being the eve of Palm Sunday, took his queen (Anne of Bretagne) by the hand, and led her out of her chamber to a place where she had never been before, to see them play at tennis in the castle-ditch. They entered together into a gallery called the Haquelebac Gallery, upon the account of its having been formerly guarded by one Haquelebac. It was the nastiest place about the castle, broken down at the entrance, and everybody committed a nuisance in it that would. The king was not a tall man, yet he knocked his head as he went in. He spent some time in looking upon the players, and talked freely with everybody. I was not there myself (for I had gone to my country-house about a week before) but his confessor the Bishop of Angers, and the gentlemen of his bed-chamber, who were then about him, told me what I write. The last expression he used whilst he was in health was, that he hoped never to commit a mortal sin again, nor a venial sin if he could help it; and with those words in his mouth he fell down backwards, and lost his speech. It was about two in in the afternoon when he fell, and he lay motionless till eleven o’clock at night. Thrice he recovered his speech, but he quickly lost it again, as his confessor told me, who had confessed him twice that week, once of course, and a second time upon occasion of his touching for the king’s evil. Every one went into the gallery that pleased, where the king was laid upon a coarse bed; and he never left it till he died, which was nine hours after. The confessor told me that every time he recovered his speech he called out upon God, the glorious Virgin Mary, St. Claude, and St. Blaise, to assist him. And thus died that great and powerful monarch in a sordid and filthy place, though he had so many magnificent palaces of his own, and was building another more stately than any of them, yet he died in this poor chamber. How plain, then, and natural is it, from these two examples, for us to acknowledge the power and omnipotence of God, and that our life is but a span and a trifle, though we are so greedy and ambitious after the riches of this world; and that princes no more than peasants are able to resist the Almighty. CH. XXVI.—How holy Friar Jerome was burned at Florence by the Malice and Solicitation of the Pope, and several Venetians and Florentines who were his Enemies.—1498.