"Sire, this mercy at least; I ask it of you on my knees!" "Sire," cried the Duc de Nemours, "has not enough blood been shed? And yet, you know, there should be mercy in the king's countenance." François, trembling in every limb, seemed struck by these words. He seized the queen's hand. "Remember, Sire," said the stern voice of the nuncio, who wished to recall the king to a more severe view of his duty,--"remember that you are the very Christian king." "Yes, I do remember it," replied François II., firmly. "Let mercy be shown to the Baron de Castelnau!" But the Cardinal de Lorraine, feigning to misinterpret the meaning of the king's first phrase, had made an imperative sign to the executioner. As François pronounced the word "mercy," Castelnau's head rolled upon the planks of the scaffold. The next day the Prince de Condé set out for Navarre. [Footnote 5: "O Lord, to us be merciful, And bless us with Thy grace, And show unto our humble hearts The brightness of Thy face."] [Footnote 6: "O Lord, to us be merciful, And bless us with Thy grace, And show unto our humble hearts The brightness of Thy face."] [Footnote 7: "Thou hast put us to the proof when we To Thy guidance did aspire; Like gold, Thou hast refined us By the ordeal of fire."] [Footnote 8: "Into the snare our foes have laid Thou, Lord, hast made us fall; And there, fast hound, we lie, and wait Thy word, O Lord of all!"] [Footnote 9: "O Lord, to _me_ be merciful, And bless _me_ with Thy grace, And show unto _my_ humble heart The brightness of Thy face."] CHAPTER XXX ANOTHER SPECIMEN OF POLITICS From the day of that fatal execution, the feeble health of François II. grew steadily worse. Seven months later (at the end of November, 1560), the court being then at Orléans, where the States-General had been convoked by the Duc de Guise, the poor boy-king of seventeen was obliged to take to his bed. Beside that bed of sorrow where Mary Stuart prayed and watched and wept, a most interesting drama depended for its conclusion upon the life or death of the son of Henri II. The real question, although others were interested in its solution, lay between a pale woman and a sinister-looking man, who were seated side by side in the evening of December 4 a few steps from the sleeping invalid, and from Mary, who was weeping silently at his pillow. The man was Charles de Lorraine, the woman Catherine de Médicis. The revengeful queen-mother, who had at first been as one dead after the struggle which we have related at the accession of her son, had awakened during the last eight months, since the "Tumult of Amboise."