In consideration of the pope's intercession and of Coeur's former services his life was spared; but he was condemned to pay the king $1,250,000 as restitution money, and $2,500,000 as a fine, and to be banished forever from the kingdom. On being notified of the decree, Jacques replied that he could not possibly raise the sums demanded. He himself owed money which he had borrowed for the king's affairs, and his goods were not worth so much. He was accordingly thrown again into prison, and the procurer-general proceeded to sell, by public auction, all the property of the prisoner which, after diligent search, he could find throughout the kingdom, including the house at Bourges. Two years passed, and the sentence of banishment was not yet executed, perhaps because the fines were not yet paid. At the end of that time Coeur, by the help of one of his former clerks, contrived to escape from prison, and fled to Rome. [Illustration: PLATE LIV HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: CLOISTERS AND COURTYARD] The end of his life is almost as obscure as the beginning. It is clear however, that, though now a man of over sixty, whose last five years had been years of intense suffering, Coeur was recognized by the pope, Calixtus III., as a man of ability and spirit. Constantinople had fallen, and the pope was anxious to undertake a new crusade. But the days of crusades were over; and his envoys pleaded and reasoned with the sovereigns of Christendom in vain. At length, in despair, the pope fitted out sixteen galleys himself, and in 1456 sent them to succor the Christian colonies in the Archipelago. The patriarch of Aquileia was the nominal leader, but an actual leader was required, and Calixtus offered the secondary command to none other than the French exile, Jacques Coeur. Coeur accepted the post; but his new career was a very short one. The expedition sailed first to Rhodes and thence to Chios, and here Coeur fell ill as the result of a wound received in some skirmish on the way. He died on the 25th of November and was buried in the Franciscan church on the island, forgiving his enemies and his king with his last breath. As has been said, Jacques Coeur's most princely residence, that at Bourges, was begun in 1443, when he was at the height of his prosperity, and was nearly completed when in 1451 his downfall came. In spite of changes in the arrangement of the interior, in spite of a clumsy addition in the Renaissance style on the right of the courtyard, and in spite of some blunders in the restoration, which was undertaken by the government in 1858, the building has escaped any grave mutilation, and may be taken as a type of the princely residence of its century. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Germanic Museum: Nuremberg_]