It seemed that Richelieu had little now to fear from open enemies at home, though the secret dread of assassination clung about him with reason to his life’s end. He had already shown a certain sense of security by acts of indulgence or of conciliation: the Duc de Vendôme had been set at liberty and the Duchesse de Chevreuse had been allowed to return to the Court, while her husband was made governor of Picardy. Champagne, the important frontier province, was given as a mark of royal confidence to the Comte de Soissons. But there were those, not more guilty, but more dangerous from their very worth and mental distinction, who felt the weight of Richelieu’s vengeance. Michel de Marillac, counted in his own time among “martyrs of the State,” after languishing for many months in his prison at Châteaudun, died of grief at the tragic death of his soldier brother. The trial and death of Marillac “l’Epée” are generally allowed to be dark stains on the Cardinal’s career. Politically, there was no case against him, and the Parliament, when first approached by Richelieu’s tool, the notorious Laffemas, refused to commit him for trial. Richelieu then appointed a Royal Commission, which sat at Verdun, the charge against the Marshal being one of peculation and oppression when governor there. Even now the Cardinal failed to secure a condemnation. The Commissioners shrank from enforcing the extreme of the law against a distinguished soldier whose sins were common to his time and his trade, and the trial dragged on very slowly, till Richelieu brought matters to a point by summoning the Commission, strengthened by members of his own choosing and presided over by the new Chancellor, M. de Châteauneuf, to meet at his country-house of Rueil. Louis de Marillac was brought from the fortress of Ste. Menehould, where he had been imprisoned since his sudden arrest some fifteen months before. He was condemned to death, but only by a small majority of his judges. Threatening letters from the Queen-mother and Monsieur did him no good, but yet the Cardinal, in his own house and with a packed jury, could not secure unanimity. All France agreed with the prisoner’s own cry: “Condemned to die for hay and straw! Not reason enough to whip a lackey!” He was beheaded in the Place de Grève on May 2, 1632, and buried in the Church of the Feuillants, long since swept away to make room for the Rue Castiglione. There might be read, for less than two hundred years, the simple and dignified epitaph in which his heirs handed down to posterity the high virtues of “this illustrious victim of a powerful and vindictive Minister.” Madame de Marillac, who bore the familiar name of Catherine de Médicis, died of grief within a few months of her husband. A dozen years later, when Cardinal de Richelieu was dead, the Parliament of Paris registered a decree acquitting Louis de Marillac of the crimes for which he ostensibly suffered.