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Transplant the Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and lead to great results, as we may see in many spheres of action: look at Rabelais and Semblancay, Plantin the printer and Descartes, Boucicault, the Napoleon of his day, and Pinaigrier, who painted most of the colored glass in our cathedrals; also Verville and Courier.
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."
On the evening of the 22d of December, 1588, when Charlotte de Semblancay, Marchioness of Noirmoutiers, to whom he was tenderly attached, pressed him to depart, or at any rate not to be present at the council next day, the only answer he made her was to hum the following ditty, by Desportes, a poet of the day:
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 was broken in pieces and thrown aside when the Rue Royale was created, but was later put together by one of the good mayors of Tours and now stands on the Place du Grand Marché, a lasting monument to the Baron de Semblançay, treasurer under Francis I, who was accused of malversation, hanged at Montfaucon and his estates, Azay-le-Rideau with the rest, confiscated by the crown.
Aramis approached Fouquet, who sat trembling in his chair, close to the open drawers; he placed his hand on his shoulder, and in an affectionate tone of voice, said: "Do not forget that the position of M. Fouquet can in no way be compared to that of Semblancay or of Marigny." "And why not, in Heaven's name?"
Chancellor Duprat was the docile servant of Louise of Savoy and the enemy of Semblancay, whose authority in financial matters he envied; and he chose the commissioners from amongst the mushroom councillors he had lately brought into Parliament. The question between the queen-mother and the superintendent led to nothing less than the trial of Semblancay.
The queen-mother, somewhat confused at first, excused herself by saying, that "those were moneys proceeding from the savings which she had made out of her revenues, and had given to the superintendent to take care of." Semblancay stuck to what he had said. The question became a personal one between the queen-mother and the minister; and commissioners were appointed to decide the difference.
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?
Semblancay, accordingly, was hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, on the 12th of August. In spite of certain ambiguities which arose touching some acts of his administration and some details of his trial, public feeling was generally and very strongly in his favor. He was an old and faithful servant of the crown; and Francis I. had for a long time called him "his father."
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