erefore, asking you to be as good as to affix another seal, by
which you will greatly oblige him who in heart and affection, Magnifique
Monsieur l'Avoyer, is entirely your good citizen and servant."

The four months' respite had now passed, and the countess with her
devoted sister presented herself before the Diet to make a last effort
to procure a postponement of the sentence of dispossession. In silence
the deputies listened to her tearful appeal, when realizing that no
answer was possible and unwilling to listen to the fatal decree, the
countess and her sister requested permission to retire. Respectfully
conducting the weeping women from the chamber, the delegates then
formally authorized the transference of Gruyere to the cities of Berne
and Fribourg. At ten o'clock in the evening of this same fatal day,
Count Michel, followed by a single faithful domestic, mounted his horse
and rode away from Gruyere. The shadows of a November night, the sighing
winds, the falling leaves, were the fitting accompaniment of this tragic
departure. Significant also was it that with the fall of the house of
Gruyere, the last remaining feudal sovereignty, the old chivalric order
forever passed from Switzerland. With the extinction of the power of
Savoy, and the establishment of the inclusive league of cantons and
cities representing the new and united nation, the little principality
of Gruyere was in any case doomed to the acceptance of the prevailing
form of government. But although hastening by his extravagance the fall
of his house, Count Michel had various difficulties for which he was not
personally responsible. With the repeated enfranchisement of his people
from their feudal contributions and taxes, his revenues had already been
seriously reduced, and the long legal process and armed resistance
necessitated by his grandfather's struggle with the rival de Vergys, had
exhausted a large part of the accumulated capital. Thus only a rigid
system of retrenchment would have sufficed to preserve the financial
integrity of Gruyere. For such an administration Count Michel was
utterly unfitted both by character and training, and he precipitated his
own inevitable ruin, when, yielding to his unbounded and unrealizable
ambitions, he essayed to reverse the course of events and restore the
power of feudality in Switzerland, at the very moment of its
disorganization. His refusal to accept any portion of his claims on the
French crown, his rejectio