nt of the crown; and Francis I. had for a
long time called him "his father." He was evidently the victim of the
queen-mother's greed and vengeance. The firmness of his behavior, at the
time of his execution, became a popular theme in the verses of Clement
Marot:--

When Maillart, officer of hell, escorted
To Montfaucon Semblancay, doomed to die,
Which, to your thinking, of the twain supported
The better havior? I will make reply:
Maillart was like the man to death proceeding;
And Semblancay so stout an ancient looked,
It seemed, forsooth, as if himself were leading
Lieutenant Maillard--to the gallows booked!

It is said that, at the very moment of execution, Semblancay, waiting on
the scaffold for at least a commutation of the penalty, said, "Had I
served God as I have served the king, He would not have made me wait so
long." Nearly two centuries later, in 1683, a more celebrated minister
than Semblancay, Colbert, in fact, as he was dying tranquilly in his bed,
after having for twenty years served Louis XIV., and in that service made
the fortune of his family as well as his own, said also, "Had I done for
God what I have done for yonder man, I had been twice saved; and now I
know not what will become of me." A striking similarity in language and
sentiment, in spite of such different ends, between two great councillors
of kings, both devoted during their lives to the affairs of the world,
and both passing, at their last hour, this severe judgment, as
Christians, upon the masters of the world and upon themselves.

About the same time the government of Francis I. was involved, through
his mother's evil passions, not in an act more morally shameful, but in
an event more politically serious, than the execution of Semblancay.
There remained in France one puissant prince, the last of the feudal
semi-sovereigns, and the head of that only one of the provincial
dynasties sprung from the dynasty of the Capetians which still held its
own against the kingly house. There were no more Dukes of Burgundy,
Dukes of Anjou, Counts of Provence, and Dukes of Brittany; by good
fortune or by dexterous management the French kingship had absorbed all
those kindred and rival states. Charles II., Duke of Bourbon, alone was
invested with such power and independence as could lead to rivalry. He
was in possession of Bourbonness, of Auvergne, of Le Forez, of La