The mighty king was
now nothing more than a feeble, dying old man, who was no longer
able to hold the pen and sign this death-warrant for which he had so
long hankered and hoped. Now it lay before him, and he no longer had
the power to use it. God, in His wisdom and His justice, had decreed
against him the most grievous and horrible of punishments; He had
left him his consciousness; He had not crippled him in mind, but in
body only. And that motionless and rigid mass which, growing chill
in death, lay there on the couch of purple trimmed with gold--that
was the king--a king whom agony of conscience did not permit to die,
and who now shuddered and was horrified in view of death, to which
he had, with relentless cruelty, hunted so many of his subjects.
Catharine and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the noble Cranmer, stood
at his bedside: and whilst in convulsive agony he grasped
Catharine's hands, he listened to the devout prayers which Cranmer
was saying over him.
Once he asked with mumbling tongue: "My lord, what kind of a world
then is that where those who condemn others to die, are condemned to
die themselves?"
And as the pious Cranmer, touched by the agonies and tortures of
conscience which he read in the king's looks, and full of pity for
the dying tyrant, sought to comfort him, and spoke to him of the
mercy of God which has compassion on every sinner, the king groaned
out: "No, no! No mercy for him who knew no mercy!"
At length this awful struggle of death with life was ended; and
death had vanquished life.
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