at he might be permitted to
withdraw entirely from the Court and finish his days in retirement and
in the bosom of his family, but this favour had constantly been denied.
As a last effort he had then represented the deplorable state of his
health, and entreated that he might be permitted to travel in order to
regain his strength, leaving his wife and children at Marcoussis; a
favour which also was not only refused, but the refusal rendered doubly
bitter by a prohibition either to see or correspond with his daughter,
whose safety was at that moment endangered by the menaces of the Queen.
He then entered briefly into the circumstances of the conspiracy, and
concluded by declaring that no attempt upon the life either of the
sovereign or the Dauphin had ever been contemplated by himself or by any
of his accomplices.[288]

Such was the defence of the dishonoured old man who had placed himself
beyond the pale of sympathy by his own degrading marriage. Yet he was
still a father; and who shall decide that the shame which in his own
case had been silenced by the voice of passion, did not crush him with
double violence when it involved the reputation of his child? Who shall
say that he had not, in the throbbing recesses of his wrung heart,
mourned with an undying remorse the fault of which he had himself been
guilty, and felt that it was visited in vengeance upon the dearest
object of his paternal love? Contemporary historians waste not a word
upon the ruined noble, the disappointed partisan, and the disgraced
father; yet the scene must have been a pitiable one in the midst of
which he stood an attainted criminal, blighted in every affection and
in every hope, the creditor of his King, and the victim of his
paternal ambition.

The sentence of the Parliament was pronounced on the 2nd of February.
The Comtes d'Auvergne and d'Entragues were condemned to death for the
crime of _lese-majeste_, and Madame de Verneuil to imprisonment in the
convent of Beaumont, near Tours, until more ample information could be
obtained of the exact extent of her participation; and meanwhile she was
to be prohibited from holding any communication save with the
sisterhood.

On the same day, the sentence having been instantly communicated to
Madame d'Entragues, with the information that the King was about to
repair to the chapel of the palace to attend mass, she hastened,
accompanied by her daughter Marie de Balzac,[289] to the Tuileries,
where the two