[Sidenote: The chancellor's fall.] But the chancellor accomplished nothing. Catharine had overcome her weak son's partiality for the grave old counsellor by persuading him that, as the chancellor's wife, his daughter, his son-in-law, and indeed his entire house, were avowedly Huguenots, it was impossible but that he was himself only restrained from making an open profession of Protestantism by the fear of losing his present position.[573] Finding himself not only stripped of all influence, and compelled to witness the enactment of measures repugnant to his very nature, but an object of hatred to his associates, Michel de l'Hospital withdrew from a council board where, as he asserted, even Charles himself did not dare to express his opinions freely.[574] Subsequently retiring altogether from the court to his country-seat of Vignai, not far from Etampes, he surrendered his insignia of office to a messenger of Catharine, who came to recommend him, in the king's name, to take that rest which his advanced years demanded. Monsieur de Morvilliers succeeded him, with the title of keeper of the seals, but the full powers of chancellor.[575] In quiet retirement, the venerable judge and legislator lingered more than four years, unhappy only in being spared to see the melancholy results of the rejection of his prudent counsels, the desolation of his native land, and the transformation of an amiable king into a murderer of his own subjects. Few days in this eventful reign were more lasting in their consequences than that which beheld the final removal from all direct influence upon the court of the only leading politician or statesman who could have forestalled the horrors of a generation of inhuman wars. [Sidenote: The plot.] [Sidenote: Marshal Tavannes its author.]