seals and I have always been the
servants of the queen-mother; she must have had the worst of it, and
Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her and her servants."
[_Memoires de Puy-Seyur._]

Thus arrested in the very midst of the army he commanded, Marshal
Marillac was taken to the castle of St. Menehould and thence to Verdun,
where a court of justice extraordinary sat upon his case. It was cleared
of any political accusation: the marshal was prosecuted for peculation
and extortion, common crimes at that time with many generals, and always
odious to the nation, which regarded their punishment with favor. "It is
a very strange thing," said Marillac, "to prosecute me as they do; my
trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is
not case enough for whipping a lackey." There was case enough for
sentencing to death a marshal of France. The proceedings lasted eighteen
months; the commission was transferred from Verdun to Ruel, to the very
house of the cardinal. Marillac was found guilty by a majority of one
only. The execution took place on the 10th of May, 1632. The former
keeper of the seals, Michael de Marillac, died of decline at Chateaudun,
three months after the death of his brother.

_Dupes' Day_ was over and lost. The queen-mother's attack on Richelieu
had failed before the minister's ascendency and the king's calculating
fidelity to a servant he did not like; but Mary de' Medici's anger was
not calmed, and the struggle remained set between her and the cardinal.
The Duke of Orleans, who had lost his wife after a year's marriage, had
not hitherto joined his mother's party, but all on a sudden, excited by
his grievances, he arrived at the cardinal's, on the 30th of January,
1631, "with a strong escort, and told him that he would consider it a
strange purpose that had brought him there; that, so long as he supposed
that the cardinal would serve him, he had been quite willing to show him
amity; now, when he saw that he foiled him in everything that be had
promised, to such extent that the way in which he, Monsieur, had behaved
himself, had served no end but to make the world believe that he had
abandoned the queen his mother, he had come to take back the word he had
given him to show him affection." On leaving the cardinal's house,
Monsieur got into his carriage and went off in haste to Orleans, whilst
the king, having received notice from Richelieu, was arriving with all
despatch