There, the grand prior and the monks of the royal abbey, in their mourning hoods, received the body of Henri IV from the hands of De Gondy, the Archbishop of Paris; and on the following day the Cardinal-Duc de Joyeuse celebrated a solemn mass and performed the funeral service of his late sovereign.

At the close of the lugubrious ceremony the iron gates of the house of death swung hoarsely upon their hinges.  The “De Profundis” pealed from the high altar, and Henry the Great was gathered to his ancestors.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] L’Etoile, vol. iv. pp.17, 18.  Montfaucon, vol. v. p.429.

[2] Matthieu, vol. 9361 of the royal manuscripts, p. 804.

[3] Dupleix, p. 403.

[4] L’Etoile, vol. iv. p. 30.

[5] Charles de Bourbon-Conti, Comte d’Anquien, son of the Comte de Soissons.

[6] Charlotte Catherine de la Tremouille, Princess Dowager of Conde, was the daughter of Louis III, Seigneur de la Tremouille, and was born in 1568.  The Prince de Conde, the chief of the Protestant party, enamoured of her beauty, made her his wife in 1586; and having died by poison two years subsequently, suspicion fell upon the Princess and some of her confidential attendants, several of whom were put to death as accessories to the crime.  Madame de Conde herself was imprisoned, and, despite her protestations of innocence, was not set at liberty for upwards of seven years, when she was at length liberated by Henri IV (1596).  She died in 1629.

[7] Marie de Luxembourg, the daughter of Sebastien de Luxembourg, Duc de Penthievre and Vicomte de Martigues, and wife of Philippe Emmanuel de Lorraine, Duc de Mercoeur.

[8] Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, whose second husband was Charles du Plessis, Seigneur de Liancourt, First Equerry, and Governor of Paris.

[9] Remarques sur l’Invention de la Bibliotheque, de M. Guillaume, art. 33.

[10] Mercure Francais, 1610, pp. 419-423.

[11] Mercure Francais, 1610, p. 423.

[12] Francois de Bonne, Duc de Lesdiguieres, was born at St. Bonnet, in Upper Dauphiny, in 1543.  He became general of the Huguenots, and obtained several victories over the Catholic troops.  On the accession of Henri IV to the French throne, that Prince appointed him lieutenant-general of his armies in Piedmont, Savoy, and Dauphiny.  His success in Savoy was brilliant, and he was created Marshal of France in 1608.  Four years subsequently he embraced the Romish faith; and died in 1626 with the title of Connetable.

[13] Richelieu, La Mere et le Fils, vol. i. pp. 27-32.

[14] Idem, pp. 24, 25.

[15] Bassompierre, Mem. p. 71.

[16] Andree d’Alegre, Comtesse and Marechale de Fervaques, was the widow of Guy de Coligny, Comte de Laval, de Montfort, etc., and the wife of Guillaume de Hautemer, Comte de Grancy, Seigneur de Fervaques, and Marechal de France.