be, it is certain that Chancellor Duprat, at his death, left a very large fortune, which the king caused to be seized, and which he partly appropriated. We read in the contemporary _Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris_ [published by Ludovic Lalanne, 1854, p. 460], “When the chancellor was at the point of death, the king sent M. de Bryon, Admiral of France, who had orders to have everything seized and all his property placed in the king’s hands. . . . They found in his place at Nantouillet eight hundred thousand crowns, and all his gold and silver plate . . . and in his Hercules-house, close to the Augustins’, at Paris, where he used to stay during his life-time, the sum of three hundred thousand livres, which were in coffers bound with iron, and which were carried off by the king for and to his own profit.” In the civil as well as in the military class, for his government as well as for his armies, Francis I. had, at this time, to look out for new servants. He did not find such as have deserved a place in history. After the deaths of Louise of Savoy, of Chancellor Duprat, of La Tremoille, of La Palice, and of all the great warriors who fell at the battle of Pavia, it was still one more friend of Francis I.’s boyhood, Anne de Montmorency, who remained, in council as well as army, the most considerable and the most devoted amongst his servants. In those days of war and discord, fraught with violence, there was no man who was more personally rough and violent than Montmorency. From 1521 to 1541, as often as circumstances became pressing, he showed himself ready for anything and capable of anything in defence of the crown and the re-establishment of order. “Go hang me such a one,” he would say, according to Brantome. “Tie you fellow to this tree; give yonder one the pike or arquebuse, and all before my eyes; cut me in pieces all those rascals who chose to hold such a clock-case as this against the king; burn me this village; set me everything a-blaze, for a quarter of a league all round.” In 1548, a violent outbreak took place at Bordeaux on account of the gabel or salt-tax; and the king’s lieutenant was massacred in it. Anne de Montmorency, whom the king had made constable in 1538, the fifth of his family invested with that dignity, repaired thither at once. “Aware of his coming,” says Brantome, “MM. de Bordeaux went two days’ journey to meet him and carry him the keys of their city: ‘Away, away,’ said he, ‘with your keys; I will have nothing to do with them; I have others which I am bringing with me, and which will make other sort of opening than yours (meaning his cannon); I will have you all hanged; I will teach you to rebel against your king, and kill his governor and lieutenant.’ Which he did not fail to do,” adds Brantome, “and inflicted exemplary punishment, but not so severe assuredly as the case required.” The narrator, it will be seen, was not more merciful than the constable.