on of the
troops were devoted to Marillac. He consulted with La Force, who advised
him to obey orders, whatever the consequences. Schomberg thereupon
showed Marillac the despatch. He beheld it with surprise and alarm, but
without thought of resistance.

"I can protest that I have done nothing contrary to the king's service,"
he said. "The truth is, that my brother, the keeper of the seals, and I
have always been the servants of the queen-mother. She must have had the
worst of it, and Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her and her
servants."

So it proved, indeed, and he was to suffer for it. He was tried,--not on
any political charge, however, the crimes alleged against him were
peculation and extortion, common practices with many of his
fellow-generals.

"It is a very strange thing," said he, bitterly, "to prosecute me as
they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and
lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey."

He was mistaken; there was case enough for beheading a marshal. It was
not a question of peculation, but of offending the great cardinal, for
which he was really put on trial, and the case ended in his being found
guilty of malfeasance in office and executed. His brother died in prison
three months afterwards,--of decline, so the records say.

"Dupes' Day," as the day we have described came to be called, was over.
The queen-mother had lost. Her dupes had suffered. Richelieu was more
powerful than ever. She had but strengthened his ascendancy over the
king. But Mary de' Medici was not the woman to acknowledge defeat
easily. No sooner had her first effort failed than her enmity against
the too-powerful minister showed itself in a new direction, the
principal agent of her purposes being now her son, the Duke of Orleans,
brother to the king. The duke, after an angry interview with the
cardinal, left Paris in haste for Orleans, his mother declaring to the
king that the occasion of his sudden departure was that he could no
longer tolerate by his presence Richelieu's violent proceedings against
herself. She professed to have been taken by surprise by his departure,
which Louis doubting, "she took occasion to belch forth fire and flames
against the cardinal, and made a fresh attempt to ruin him in the king's
estimation, though she had previously bound herself by oath to take no
more steps against him."

Her malignity defeated itself. Richelieu was too skilful an adept in