"Two years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve the young king lay dying. His disease, it has been said, was caused by poison, which had been applied to the leaves of one of his favorite books for the purpose, by his unnatural mother. His sufferings were dreadful in the extreme. Historians tell us that he sweat drops of blood. His mental anguish was as fearful as his bodily distress. He would cry out to his nurse, '_Ah, nourrice, ma mie, ma bonne! que du sang, que d'assassinats! Oh quels mauvais conseils j'ai suivis! Oh Seigneur Dieu, pardonnez moi, et faites moi misericorde!_' 'Ah, nurse, my good nurse! What blood! What murders! Oh what bad counsels I followed! Lord God, pardon me! Have mercy on me!' "Historians cover the memory of Charles IX. with infamy, but his first impulses were usually kind, and his first intentions good. He does not seem to have inherited the disposition of that monster of wickedness, his mother. His most evil acts could hardly be called his own. Left to himself he would have been deemed a most polished and amiable prince, though wanting in decision. As a victim of bad counsellors, pity should mingle with the censure that follows his name." [Illustration: CHARLES IX. AND CATHARINE DE MEDICI.] CHAPTER XV. PARIS. Paris the Beautiful.--Notre Dame.--Tuileries and Louvre.--Garden of the Tuileries.--Bois de Boulogne.--Church of the Invalides.-- Napoleon's Tomb.--Place de la Concorde.--Story of the Man of the Iron Mask.--Versailles and the Trianons.--Story of the Dauphin.-- Fontainebleau.--The Seine.--Water-Omnibuses.--A Wonderful Boat.-- Tommy's French.--A Surprise.--St. Eustache.--Molière.--Young French Heroes.--Wyllys Wynn's Poem. Paris the beautiful! City of light hearts, smiling faces, charming courtesies, and gay scenes everywhere! City of dark tragedies of history that have hardly left behind a scar! The tropical forest gives no warning of poison lurking under the flowers; the bright Southern sky wears no trace of the tempest. Paris says to the stranger, "I am beautiful: I have ever been beautiful, and I wear loveliness like a crown." The streets are as gay as the summer sunshine in them; the boulevards, as the wide streets and avenues for pleasure walks are called, seem channels of happiness, through which the tides of life run as brightly as they glimmer along the Seine. "La belle Paris!" says the stranger as he comes, and "La belle Paris!" he utters respectfully as he goes. We do not wonder that the French love it; that Napoleon gloried in it, and that Mary Queen of Scots left it with a heavy heart. Here human nature has light, warmth, and glow; and love, sympathy, and patriotism are everywhere to be seen. "Where are the ruins caused by the siege and the Commune?" asked Frank Gray, after the Class had been driven through a number of streets. "I do not see the first sign of there having been a recent war and revolution."