If that should happen God preserve you from it! -- the affairs of this kingdom, which seem well advanced for us, would become bad." As soon as he had done with politics he bade his doctors tell him how long he had still to live.

One of them knelt down before his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that, saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him the penitential psalms.

When they came to the twentieth versicle of the _Miserere,--Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem_ (that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up),--He made them stop.

"Ah!" said he, "if God had been pleased to let me live out my time, I would, after putting an end to the war in France, reducing the _dauphin_ to submission or driving him out of the kingdom in which I would have established a sound peace, have gone to conquer Jerusalem.

The wars I have undertaken have had the approval of all the proper men and of the most holy personages; I commenced them and have prosecuted them without offence to God or peril to my soul." These were his last words.