subjection, getting from him enormous sums, besides causing him to amply provide for his friends and relations. 'Je sais bien, lui dit il quelquefois, que vous m'envoyerez comme vous faites d'autres, mais-par un grand serment qu'il jurait-vous ne vivrez point huit jours apres.""I know well," he would sometimes say, "that you will get rid of me as you have done of others, but—” and here he swore a solemn oath" you will not live eight days afterwards.” This incident, as the reader will probably well remember, has been transferred by Sir W. Scott, in Quentin Durward, to Martius Galeotti the astrologer to the same monarch, and who in fact has many other points of resemblance to Coythier.

The account given of the last hours of Louis XI. by the historian Gaguin bears sufficient testimony to the fact of the blood-drink, and though the historian has been justly reproached for his excessive credulity on many occasions, there seems to be no reason for doubting him here when all he asserts is so consonant to the prejudices of the age and the peculiar character of the monarch. As the whole scene is exceedingly curious in itself, as well as illustrative of our subject, we shall give a free version of a portion of it, which is in old French and the black letter. "King Louis had no rest from his malady, and felt himself growing weaker and weaker every day, so that the fear of death encreased upon him, for no one was more desirous of life than he was. Nevertheless providing for his end he caused himself to be carried to Amboise, to which place having summoned his son, Charles, he said, My dear son, I am nearer to my end than you imagine; my disorder incessantly torments me, and no medicine affords any relief. You will reign after me, for the which you will find loyal servants the most essential. Amongst many whose faith and dili

GAGUIN-Croniques de France. Fueillet. ccij. Folio, 1516. 1

gence I have experienced I particularly recommend two men to you, that is to say, Oliver le Dain and Jean de Doyat, for of the services of Oliver I have had the greatest use; take him after me into your service, and allow none of the goods or offices he has acquired from me to be taken from him. Gui Pot* and Bouchage, you will esteem as prudent men and of good counsel. In regard to Philip D'Esquerdes, doubt not he is skilful in all military matters, and therefore, when the war breaks out, make use of his prudence and moderation. All the others that have dignity and offices from me, I wish that you should confirm and entertain them. Relieve as much as you can the people, whom I have ground down by the necessity of war. Do not trust to your mother, for being of Savoy she has always seemed to me to favour the Burgundians. Otherwise, that is to say as to the rest of her qualities, I have always esteemed her good and virtuous." After having spoken thus, Louis returned to Tours where, thinking to relieve his disorder by music, he ordered all manner of instrumentalists to be brought together, and it is said that they amounted to one hundred and twenty. Amongst them were shepherds, and they played for many days by the king's chamber, that he might not yield to the sleepiness which oppressed him.t But besides this class of people he summoned to him 'Guy Pot was the Baily of Vermandois, and D'Esquerdes was a soldier of distinguished conduct and valour.

*

+ Pere Daniel in his "Histoire de France," (vol. vii. p. 640) tells us that in addition to these amusements, as the king could no longer go to the chase, of which he was passionately fond, they took the largest rats they could find and hunted them in his chamber with cats for his amusement. The same authority also relates the beforementioned story of Cotier-whom he calls Coctier-terrifying the king into compliance with all his wishes by swearing that he would not outlive him eight days. But indeed, tyrant as Louis was by nature, he seems to have been kept in abject submission by this man, and his worthy coadjutors, Olivier le Dain and Jean Doiac, or Doyat.,

others of a very different kind, men dwelling in solitudes and in hermitages, with those who were greatly in the renown of sanctity. Likewise there came to Tours women of excellent devotion, who were coinmanded to pray to Heaven incessantly, that it would restore health to the king and grant him longer life, so anxious was he not to quit this world. I imagine," says the historian, "he foresaw the troubles which the lust of rule would give rise to after his death."

Ambassadors now came to Louis from Flanders and Brabant, and his son Charles V. was betrothed to Marguerite, the daughter of Maximilian, but his disorder still grew upon him; and in this year, 1443, "imploring high and low the aid of God and man, he commanded that they should bring to Tours the sacred liquor, which it is said was sent from Heaven to anoint King Clovis in his city of Rheims. Besides this he had from the holy chapel at Paris the rod of the high priest Aaron, which many affirm"-the historian himself is modest"to have been divinely given to Charlemagne. But there was nothing that could put off the appointed hour. Every day he grew worse and worse, and the medicines profited him nothing, though of a strange character, for he vehemently hoped to recover by the human blood which he drank and swallowed from certain children. But he died at Tours" -which from the tone of the historian would seem a greater miracle than the idea of such a horrible mode of cure.

It may perhaps add little to our faith in the former use of the blood-bath that Klinger has employed it to heighten the horrors of his Faust; but when we find the learned Sprengel giving credit to it, in addition to what has been already said, it seems absurd to deny the existence of a custom the belief in which has been so universal.

MOON-MEN.

MUCH has been written of late years knowingly and unknowingly about the Gypsies; but, strange to say, Dekker's satirical account of them seems to have escaped observation, though the pamphlet from which the following extract is taken is far from being uncommon. Making every reasonable allowance for the exaggerations of a professed satirist,-and Dekker like Iago was nothing if not cynical"- there seems to be no ground for doubting that his picture of the vices and follies of his age was in the main true. As such it is presented to the reader, with the omission only, or softening down, of a few phrases here and there, which were manifestly too coarse for the present taste.

"A Moon-Man signifies in English a madman because the moon hath greatest domination, above any other planet, over the bodies of frantic persons. But these Moon-Men, whose images are now to be carved, are neither absolutely mad nor yet perfectly in their wits. Their name they borrow from the moon, because the moon is never in one shape two nights together but wanders up and down Heaven like an antic, so these change

able stuff companions never tarry one day in a place but are the only base runagates upon earth. And as in the moon there is a man, that never stirs without a bush of thorns at his back, so these Moon-Men lie under bushes, and are indeed no better than hedge-creepers. They are a people more scattered than Jews, and more hated, beggarly in apparel, barbarous in condition, and beastly in behaviour, and bloody if they meet advantage. A man, that sees them, would swear they had all the yellow jaundice; or that they were tawny Moors' bastards, for no red-oaker man carries a face of a more filthy complexion; yet are they not born so, neither hath the sun burnt them so, but they are painted so; yet they are not good painters neither, for they do not make faces, but mar faces. By a bye-name they are called Gypsies; they call themselves Egyptians; others in mockery call them Moon-Men. If they be Egyptian, sure I am they never descended from any of the tribes of those people that came out of the land of Egypt; Ptolemy, King of the Egyptians, I warrant, never called them his subjects, no nor Pharaoh before him. Look, what difference there is between a civil citizen of Dublin and a wild kerne, so much difference there is between one of these counterfeit Egyptians and a true English beggar. An English rogue is just of the same livery. They are commonly an army about fourscore strong, and they never march with all their bags and baggages together, but like boot-halers * they forage up and down countries, four, five, or six in a company. As the Switzer has his wench and his cock when he goes to the wars, so these vagabonds have their women, with a number of little

A " 'Boot-haler" is a robber, or plunderer, and is so explained both by Cotgrave and in the Lexicon Tetraglotton. "BUTINEUR" says Cotgrave," a boot-haler, pillager ”—and in the Tetraglotton we have "BOOT-HALER, Butineur, Predatore.