Enormous and unexpected wealth excites envy and suspicion at the same time that it confers influence; and the envious before long become enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Coeur were raised in the king’s own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune--the coinage of questionable money--furnished some specious ground for them. There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters was added one of even more importance. Agnes Sorel had died eighteen months previously (February 9, 1450); and on her death-bed she had appointed Jacques Coeur one of the three executors of her will. In July, 1451, Jacques was at Taillebourg, in Guyenne, whence he wrote to his wife that “he was in as good case and was as well with the king as ever he had been, whatever anybody might say.” Indeed, on the 22d of July Charles VII. granted him a “sum of seven hundred and seventy-two livres of Tours to help him to keep up his condition and to be more honorably equipped for his service;” and, nevertheless, on the 31st of July, on the information of two persons of the court, who accused Jacques Coeur of having poisoned Agnes Sorel, Charles ordered his arrest and the seizure of his goods, on which he immediately levied a hundred thousand crowns for the purposes of the war. Commissioners extraordinary, taken from amongst the king’s grand council, were charged to try him; and Charles VII. declared, it is said, that “if the said moneyman were not found liable to the charge of having poisoned or caused to be poisoned Agnes Sorel, he threw up and forgave all the other cases against him.” The accusation of poisoning was soon acknowledged to be false, and the two informers were condemned as calumniators; but the trial was, nevertheless, proceeded with. Jacques Coeur was accused “of having sold arms to the infidels, of having coined light crowns, of having pressed on board of his vessels, at Montpellier, several individuals, of whom one had thrown himself into the sea from desperation, and lastly of having appropriated to himself presents made to the king, in several towns of Languedoc, and of having practised in that country frequent exaction, to the prejudice of the king as well as of his subjects.” After twenty-two months of imprisonment, Jacques Coeur, on the 29th of May, 1453, was convicted, in the king’s name, on divers charges, of which several entailed a capital penalty; but “whereas Pope Nicholas V. had issued a rescript and made request in favor of Jacques Coeur, and regard also being had to services received from him,” Charles VII. spared his life,