The parliament was now directed to take cognizance of the plot. Henry, however, whose main object in all this was to render his haughty mistress more submissive, sent one of his confidential servants to make her an offer of pardon on certain conditions. He was repulsed, as he richly deserved to be. The marchioness disdainfully replied, that, as she had never committed a crime against the king, there was no room for a pardon. The trial accordingly proceeded. The conspirators defended themselves dextrously. Biron had been ruined partly by admitting, at the outset, the fair character and veracity of intended witnesses. The marchioness and the count at least avoided that rock, by manifesting an apparently bitter hostility to each other. As to d’Entragues, he censured them both; but his vindication principally consisted of a severe exposure and impeachment of Henry’s conduct, with respect to himself, the marchioness, and her sister. Though in a legal point of view, whatever they might be in a moral, the proofs against the prisoners were by no means clear, the judges, on the 1st of February, 1605, found Auvergne, d’Entragues, and Morgan, guilty of high treason, and condemned them to lose their heads. The marchioness was sentenced to be confined in a monastery, while further inquiries were being made into her past proceedings. She was, however, soon after allowed to reside in her own house at Verneuil; and no long time elapsed before the king ordered that all inquiry into her acts should be discontinued. The punishment of the remaining offenders was next commuted. D’Entragues was exiled to his house at Malesherbes, Morgan was sent out of the kingdom, and Auvergne was doomed to remain in “that great heap of stones,” which he so much abhorred. Thus ended a farce which was eminently disgraceful to Henry, and for which he was justly censured. “It excited indignation,” says de Thou, “to see the ministry of the most respectable tribunal in the realm profaned by a court intrigue. The king, it was said, had brought the marchioness to trial, not for the purpose of punishing her, nor to give an example which was equally necessary and full of equity, but that her father and brother, who had tried to withdraw her from the court, might be foremost in exhorting her to renew her connection with a prince who madly loved her.” To crown the whole, the monarch who, to secure more effectually a refractory mistress, had thus made a laughing-stock of the laws and the magistracy, speedily deserted that mistress, and transferred his fickle affections to Jacqueline de Beuil, whom he created countess of Moret.