Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Nothing that concerns you," replied the officer, disdainfully. "The king has sent me to fetch the Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, whom he invites to dinner."
At the moment when the first movement of the crowd took place, Georges d'Estouteville was stupefied at seeing, at one of the windows of the hotel de Poitiers, his dear Marie de Saint-Vallier, laughing with the count. She was mocking at him, poor devoted lover, who was going to his death for her.
Let Cornelius know that I shall be at his house to-night to begin the inquiry myself. Monsieur de Saint-Vallier," said the king, looking fixedly at the count, "I know about you. All your blood could not pay for one drop of mine; do you hear me? By our Lady of Clery! you have committed crimes of lese-majesty. Did I give you such a pretty wife to make her pale and weakly?
"Sire," replied Saint-Vallier, haughtily, "I would prefer an axe at my throat to the ornament of marriage on my head." "You may have both," said Louis XI. "None of you are safe from such infirmities, messieurs. Go into the farther hall. Conyngham," continued the king, addressing the captain of the guard, "you are asleep! Where is Monsieur de Bridore? Why do you let me be approached in this way?
Some persons wrongfully attributed to the influence of Saint-Vallier the order which detained the worthy bishop in France; on the contrary, Saint-Vallier had said one day to the minister, "It would be very hard for a bishop who has founded this church and who desires to go and die in its midst, to see himself detained in France.
The Abbé de Saint-Vallier had not yet departed before he gave evidence of his munificence, and proved to the faithful of his future bishopric that he would be to them as generous a father as he whom he was about to replace.
"I know no occasion on which he has shown so strongly his love for his Church; for he has done everything that could be desired to procure a person capable of preserving and perfecting the good work which he has begun here." If the Abbé de Saint-Vallier had not been a man after God's own heart, he would not have accepted a duty so honourable but so difficult.
Finally, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the whole clergy, the civil and military authorities, and the people having assembled on the quay, Mgr. de Saint-Vallier made his appearance, addressed first by M. de Bernières in the name of the clergy.
The decree was not executed, however; Saint-Vallier received his reprieve on the scaffold itself. Francis I. was neither rancorous nor cruel; and the entreaties, or, according to some evil-speakers of the day, the kind favors, of the Lady de Brew, Saint-Vallier's daughter and subsequently the celebrated Diana of Poitiers, obtained from the king her father's life.
He cast an ambiguous look on the Comte de Saint-Vallier, thinking of the sentence he meant to pronounce upon him. The deep silence which reigned was presently broken by the steps of Tristan l'Hermite as he mounted the grand staircase. The grand provost entered the hall, and, advancing toward the king, said: "Sire, the affair is settled." "What! is it all over?" said the king.
Word Of The Day