POPULAR BELIEFS. 



261 



ceded and accompanied by presages of many kinds. From one end of France 

 to the other, there were so many precursory signs of a great event that the 

 people believed that the end of the world was at hand. At Paris the May- 

 pole, planted in the courtyard of the Louvre, fell to the ground without being 

 touched ; in the abbey church of St. Denis the stone which sealed the funeral 

 vault of the Valois lifted itself from its place, and the statues upon the royal 

 tombs shed tears. Henry IV. himself had gloomy presentiments, which 

 doubtless arose from the great number of official warnings addressed to him 

 on this subject. " You do not understand me," he said to the Due de Guise 

 on the very morning of his death ; " when you have lost me, you will learn 



Fig. 189. Dream of Childeric. After a Miniature in the " Chronicles of St. Denis." Manuscript 



of the Fourteenth Century. In the National Library, Paris. 



to appreciate me, and that will not be long first." He often remarked that it 

 had been predicted for him that he would die in a carriage and in his fiftieth 

 year. After the murder numerous visions, evidently bearing upon this tragic 

 event, were mentioned : at Douai, a priest, who was dying at the very hour 

 the crime was committed, had three convulsions, and expired saying, " The 

 greatest monarch in the world is being slain." In an abbey in Picardy a 

 nun who was sick exclaimed at the moment of the assassination, " Pray God 

 for the King, for he is being killed." 



Visions, which have often been confounded with dreams, do not occupy 



