As for the unhappy prince, he had already condemned himself.
Confined in his tower of Orthez, he had taken to his bed, and there lay, concealing himself in the clothes; and for several days refused all nourishment, giving himself up altogether to despair.

Those whose business it was to serve him, finding this, became alarmed, and, hastening to his father, related the fact: "My Lord," said they, "for the love of God, take heed to your son; for he is starving in the prison, where he lies, and has not eaten since he entered there, for his meat remains untouched as when we first took it into the tower." Thereupon the count started up, without uttering a word, and, quitting his chamber, hurried to the prison where his son was, says Froissart, and, "by ill fortune, he held in his hand a _small, long knife_, with which he was cleaning and arranging his nails.

He commanded the door of the dungeon to be opened, when he went straight to his son, and, still holding the knife in his hand by the blade, _which did not project from it more than half an inch_, he caught him by the throat, calling out, 'Ha! traitor!--why will you not eat ?' and by some means the steel entered into a vein.

The count, on this, instantly departed, neither saying or doing more, and returned to his chamber.

His poor child, terrified at the sight of his father, felt all his blood turn, weak as he was with fasting, and the point of the knife having opened a vein in his throat, _however small it might have been_,--turned him round--and died! "Thus," continues the chronicler, "it was as I tell you: this was the death of young Gaston de Foix.