than Semblancay, Colbert, in fact, as he was dying tranquilly in his bed,
after having for twenty years served Louis XIV., and in that service made
the fortune of his family as well as his own, said also, "Had I done for
God what I have done for yonder man, I had been twice saved; and now I
know not what will become of me." A striking similarity in language and
sentiment, in spite of such different ends, between two great councillors
of kings, both devoted during their lives to the affairs of the world,
and both passing, at their last hour, this severe judgment, as
Christians, upon the masters of the world and upon themselves.

About the same time the government of Francis I. was involved, through
his mother's evil passions, not in an act more morally shameful, but in
an event more politically serious, than the execution of Semblancay.
There remained in France one puissant prince, the last of the feudal
semi-sovereigns, and the head of that only one of the provincial
dynasties sprung from the dynasty of the Capetians which still held its
own against the kingly house. There were no more Dukes of Burgundy,
Dukes of Anjou, Counts of Provence, and Dukes of Brittany; by good
fortune or by dexterous management the French kingship had absorbed all
those kindred and rival states. Charles II., Duke of Bourbon, alone was
invested with such power and independence as could lead to rivalry. He
was in possession of Bourbonness, of Auvergne, of Le Forez, of La Marche,
of Beaujolais, and a large number of domains and castles in different
parts of France. Throughout all these possessions he levied taxes and
troops, convoked the local estates, appointed the officers of justice,
and regulated almost the whole social organism. He was born on the 10th
of February, 1490, four years before Francis I.; he was the head of the
younger branch of the Bourbons-Montpensier; and he had married, in 1515,
his cousin, Suzanne of Bourbon, only daughter of Peter II., head of the
elder branch, and Anne of France, the able and for a long while puissant