Note 55 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Louis the Eleventh. “In the month of March, 1481, Louis was seized with a fit of apoplexy at St. Bénoit-du-lac-mort, near Chinon. He remained speechless and bereft of reason three days; and then but very imperfectly restored, he languished in a miserable state.... To cure him,” says a contemporary historian, “wonderful and terrible medicines were compounded. It was reported among the people that his physicians opened the veins of little children, and made him drink their blood, to correct the poorness of his own.”—Bussey’s History of France. London, 1850.