I charge you with it before Him, and I have a clear conscience.

I am but a know-nothing who have left myself to your guidance." An awful appeal from a dying king to the guides of his conscience.

He had dispeopled his kingdom, reduced to exile, despair, or falsehood fifteen hundred thousand of his subjects, but the memory of the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants did not trouble him; they were for him rather a pledge of his salvation and of his acceptance before God.

He was thinking of the Catholic church, the holy priests exiled or imprisoned, the nuns driven from their convent, the division among the bishops, the scandal amongst the faithful.

The great burden of absolute power was evident to his eyes; he sought to let it fall back upon the shoulders of those who had enticed him or urged him upon that fatal path.