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"Maitre Jean Balue, A perdu la vue De ses eveches. Monsieur de Verdun. N'en a plus pas un; Tous sont depeches."* * Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics. Monsieur of Verdun has no longer one; all have been killed off. The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned man.

"As slightly as might be," answered D'Hymbercourt, "only a score or two of the Scottish Guard, and a few knights and gentlemen of his household among whom his astrologer, Galeotti, made the gayest figure." "That fellow," said Crevecoeur, "holds some dependence on the Cardinal Balue I should not be surprised that he has had his share in determining the King to this step of doubtful policy.

My predecessors have seen themselves in worse plight, and have not been dismayed." Neither the constable De St. Pol nor the cardinal De la Balue said anything to the king about this rough disposition on the part of Duke Charles; they both in their own personal interest desired the interview, and did not care to bring to light anything that might be an obstacle to it.

These were constructed with horrible ingenuity, so that a person of ordinary size could neither stand up at his full height, nor lie lengthwise in them. Some ascribe this horrid device to Balue himself. At any rate, he was confined in one of these dens for eleven years, nor did Louis permit him to be liberated till his last illness.

Once firmly engaged in his own torture while his friend Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in a similar box, and the foxy old king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead we may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.

"To our dear and beloved cousin the Count of Dammartin, grand master of France." Letters of the same date to Rochefoucauld and others also declare that Louis goes most gladly with his dear brother of Burgundy and that the affair will not require much time. To Cardinal Balue he writes only a few words, telling him that the messenger will be more communicative.

"Ah!" said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for the first time, "Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Monsieur the Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop!"

He found the minister in a lucky time and humour for essaying some of those practices on his fidelity, to which it is well known that Balue had the criminal weakness to listen. Already in the morning, as the jealous temper of Louis had suggested, more had passed betwixt them than the Cardinal durst have reported to his master.

He remembered, perhaps, at that time how that, sixteen years before, in writing to his lieutenant-general in Poitou to hand over to Balue, Bishop of Evreux, the property of a certain abbey, he said, "He is a devilish good bishop just now; I know not what he will be here-after."

The central tower with its tall steeple now encased in scaffolding was built in 1470 by Cardinal Balue, Bishop of Evreux and inventor of the fearful wooden cages in one of which the prisoner Dubourg died at Mont St Michel.