Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/78

64 the injustice of the trial and the excessive severity of the sentence aroused the indignation of all honorable men. Instead of being arraigned before the parliament in his quality of duke and peer, according to the laws of the time, Bernard de La Valette was delivered over to a commission as the Marshal de Marillac had formerly been, The duke fled, perceiving that they only sought his life, and they adjudged him guilty of contumacy in an unheard-of manner. The king assembled in his chamber a certain number of the members of parliament, the chief justice, the presidents à mortier, a few counsellors of State, and several picked dukes and peers; of these he formed a sort of tribunal, placed himself at its head, presided himself, and, despite the generous resistance of the most of the members of parliament, who demanded that the affair should be referred to them in conformity with every ordinance, he forced these spurious judges to deliberate upon and to adopt the harsh conclusions of the attorney-general; and the Duke de La Valette was declared criminal of leze-majesty, and guilty of perfidy, treason, cowardice, and disobedience. He was condemned to be decapitated, his property confiscated, and his lands transferred from the united crown to the demesne of the king. The attorney-general, Mathieu Molé, extricated himself with difficulty from the duty of carrying this odious sentence into execution, and the illustrious criminal was beheaded in effigy upon the Place de Grève on the 8th of June, 1639. Such a method of procedure in a criminal case was a subversion of all the laws of the kingdom. If it dismayed magistrates attached to the king, and certainly not factious, like the presidents