I grieve to trouble you with my sorrows, but I trust to your sympathy as a man and a friend.

I hope that you will remember me in your prayers, for you can put your trust where, in former days, I never could place my own." The dying crusader wrote another letter, in the same mournful strain, to another intimate friend, Don Pedro Mendoza, Spanish envoy in Genoa.

It was dated upon the same day from his camp near Namur, and repeated the statement that the King of France was ready to invade the Netherlands, so soon as Alencon should prepare an opening.

"His Majesty," continued Don John, "is resolved upon nothing; at least, I am kept in ignorance of his intentions.

Our life is doled out to us here by moments.