ars after Louis X,--only, as he had expired under
the torture, this minister was hanged after death, and his innocence
duly acknowledged in course of time. Pierre Remy, successor of Gerard
de la Guette and treasurer of Charles le Bel, who succeeded Philippe le
Long, was arrested by Charles's successor, Philippe de Valois, even
before he had been crowned, and hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, like
his predecessors. He was at first intended for the little gibbet of
Montigny, reserved for the vulgar, but on his way there--whether moved
by sudden remorse, or by ambition for higher honors--he accused himself
of a multitude of new crimes, among others, of high treason against the
king and against the State. He was accordingly transferred to
Montfaucon, where he had the distinction of being hanged above all
others. This was in 1328.

"The amount of his property which was confiscated," says the historian
Felibien, "was estimated at twelve hundred thousand livres, which was
the produce, as well as the proof, of his pillaging; but this example
and that of several others of a similar kind did not serve to render any
more moderate those who have since had charge of the finances,--as
witness Mace de Manches, treasurer-changer of the king's treasury,
executed, like Pierre Remy, in 1331; Rene de Siran, director of the
mint, treated in the same fashion in 1333, and some others."

Louis X, Philippe V, and Charles IV, the three sons of Philippe le Bel
who reigned in succession after him, and who ended the elder branch of
the Capetiens, were even more unfortunate in their wives than in their
treasurers. These three Burgundian princesses, Marguerite, Jeanne, and
Blanche, were of an exceedingly dissolute character; the eldest and the
youngest resided in the abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two
Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le
Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314;
they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive,
mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two
princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the
Chateau-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the
husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin,
or the Quarreller, he disposed of his unworthy spouse by smothering her
between two mattresses, or, according to the local legend, strangling
her with her own long h