midnight
But I shuddered when I considered how narrow had been the King 's escape , how trifling the circumstance which had led to suspicion , how fortuitous the inspiration by which I had chanced on discovery . The delay of a single day , the occurrence of the slightest mishap , might have been fatal not to him only but to the best interests of France ; which his death at a time when he was still childless must have plunged into the most melancholy of wars . Of the wretched Spaniard I need say little more . Caught in his own snare , he was no sooner withdrawn from the court than he fell into violent convulsions , which held him until midnight when he died with symptoms and under circumstances so nearly resembling those which had attended the death of Madame de Beaufort at Easter , that I have several times dwelt on the strange coincidence , and striven to find the connecting link . But I never hit on it ; and the King 's death , and that unexplained tendency to imitate great crimes under which the vulgar labour , prevailed with me to keep the matter secret . Nay , as I believed that d'Evora had played the part of an unconscious tool , and as a hint pressed home sufficed to procure the withdrawal of the chaplain whom Maignan had named , I did not think it necessary to disclose the matter even to the King my master . Believing that I have now set down all those particulars of the treaty with Epernon and the consequent pacification of Brittany in the year 1598 which it will be of advantage to the public to know , that it may the better distinguish in the future those who have selfishly impoverished the State from those who , in its behalf , have incurred obloquy and high looks , I proceed next to the events which followed the King 's return to Paris .