"I choose to show myself.

They shall see the Bearnese," was his reply to those who implored him to have a care for his personal safety.

And at last, when the day was done, the victory gained, and more French nobles lay dead on the field, as Catharine de' Medici bitterly declared, than had fallen in a battle for twenty years; when two thousand of the King's best troops had been slain, and when the bodies of Joyeuse and his brother had been laid out in the very room where the conqueror's supper, after the battle, was served, but where he refused, with a shudder, to eat, he was still as eager as before--had the wretched Valois been possessed of a spark of manhood, or of intelligence--to shield him and his kingdom from the common enemy.' For it could hardly be doubtful, even to Henry III., at that moment, that Philip II.

and his jackal, the Duke of Guise, were pursuing him to the death, and that, in his breathless doublings to escape, he had been forced to turn upon his natural protector.

And now Joyeuse was defeated and slain.