"The bed might have been let down by some artificial means?
But no! I do not remember to have felt a bruise, nor any shock either.

Would they not rather have poisoned me at my meals, or with the fumes of wax, as they did my ancestress, Jeanne d'Albret ?" Suddenly, the chill of the dungeons seemed to fall like a wet cloak upon Louis's shoulders.

"I have seen," he said, "my father lying dead upon his funeral couch, in his regal robes.

That pale face, so calm and worn; those hands, once so skillful, lying nerveless by his side; those limbs stiffened by the icy grasp of death; nothing there betokened a sleep that was disturbed by dreams.

And yet, how numerous were the dreams which Heaven might have sent that royal corpse--him whom so many others had preceded, hurried away by him into eternal death! No, that king was still the king: he was enthroned still upon that funeral couch, as upon a velvet armchair; he had not abdicated one title of his majesty.