The preliminary proceedings being completed, three days were occupied by the parliament in going over the mass of evidence, and hearing the summing up of the attorney general. The courts of justice, in those times, always commenced their sittings at an early hour. Between five and six o’clock, on the morning of the fourth day, Biron, closely guarded, was taken by water to the hall of the parliament, where a hundred and twelve of the members were in waiting to receive him; the peers had unanimously refused to sit upon his trial. At the sight of this array of judges he changed colour, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and is said to have assumed a kind of theatrical air which was scarcely decorous. A contemporary describes him as rudely bidding the chancellor speak louder, and as “putting forward his right foot, holding his mantle under his arm, with his hand on his side, and raising his other hand to heaven, and smiting his breast with it, whenever he called upon God and the celestial beings to be witnesses of his integrity in the service of the king and kingdom.” The whole of the crimes attributed to him had been arranged under five heads, concerning which he was interrogated by the chancellor. The questioning and defence of Biron lasted between four and five hours, and it must be owned that, in this final struggle for life and reputation, he made a noble stand. Though, in the course of a long speech, he sometimes became entangled in contradictions, its general tenor was well calculated to produce a favourable effect; at moments he was even eloquent, and worked strongly on the feelings of his auditors. Much he denied, and what he could not deny he palliated; with respect to the treasons charged against him, he was, he said, the seduced and not the seducer, a man not deliberately wicked, but led astray by hateful intriguers, who wrought his violent passions into frenzy, by representing that the monarch had undervalued and insulted him—a representation which seemed to be confirmed by his being refused the government of Bourg; he pleaded that his errors had gone no farther than intention, that they had been fully and freely pardoned, and had never been repeated; he urged his numerous and eminent services as a counterbalance to his faults, and the mercy which had uniformly been shown to far worse offenders as a reason why it should be extended to him; and he repelled, as an infamous calumny, the accusation of having intended to bring about the death of Henry—yet, imprudent as such language was, he could not forbear from broadly hinting that the monarch was fickle, unjust, and cruel: “I rely more upon you, gentlemen,” said he, “than I do upon the king, who, having formerly looked on me with the eyes of his affection, no longer sees me but with the eye of his hatred, and thinks it a virtue to be cruel to me, and a fault to exercise towards me an act of clemency.” At the close of his