How greatly Count Rodolphe was lacking in the noble and humanitarian qualities which had so generally characterized the counts of Gruyere, was shown in his dealings with his young relative Othon de Grandson. The comrade of his brother, Jean de Gruyere, in his French campaigns and in his long captivity in Spain, Othon de Grandson was later doubly related to Count Rodolphe, as brother-in-law of his first wife Marguerite d'Alamandi, and as nephew of his second countess, Marguerite de Grandson. The tragic hero of an unjust drama of prosecution which divided in opposing camps the nobles of Romand Switzerland, Othon de Grandson was falsely accused of complicity in the poisoning of Count Amedee VII of Savoy, and although declared innocent by a royal French tribunal, was again implacably accused by his rival in love, Count Estavayer, on his return to his estates. Calling God to witness that his accuser lied, he consented to defend and prove his innocence in a trial of arms, where, in the presence of his suzerain and of his council and knights assembled, he fell mortally wounded at the feet of his opponent. No effort was made by Count Rodolphe to defend his relative, while Rodolphe le Jeune was not only an unprotesting witness of his undeserved and tragic fate, but the purchaser with his father's assistance of the confiscated Grandson estates. Again, although selling the newly acquired chateaux of Oron and Palezieux to increase their revenues, the two Rodolphes, in total disregard of the rights of the new owners, attempted to retake them by force of arms, and except for the immediate intervention of the count of Savoy, would have plunged the newly pacified country into a general war. An enchanting legend regarding the first wife of Count Rodolphe illuminates the dismal story of his inglorious reign. Marguerite d'Alamandi has been confused in the tradition with Marguerite de Grandson, the second wife of Rodolphe. It is Marguerite d'Alamandi, and not the other Marguerite who is the heroine of the tale which has been elaborated into a moving little drama by a poet pastor of the eighteenth century, and which beautifully preserves the customs and the atmosphere of that distant time.