From all quarters the king was importuned by entreaties to pardon the criminals. The countess de Bouteville threw herself at his feet, to beg the life of her husband; but he passed on without replying. “I pity her,” said he to his courtiers, “but I must and will maintain my authority.” The nobility were not more successful in their supplications to the king and the parliament. At the trial all that forensic talent could do for the prisoners was done by Chastelet, their counsel. The plea which he put in for them was written with so much eloquence and boldness, that cardinal Richelieu sternly told him it seemed to impeach the justice of the king. “Excuse me, sir,” replied Chastelet, “it is only meant to justify his mercy, in case he should extend it to one of the bravest men in his kingdom.” When the sentence of death was passed, another effort was made to move the king. The princess of Condé, accompanied by three duchesses, and the wife of Bouteville, requested an audience of his Majesty. He at first refused to see them; but he subsequently admitted them to a private interview in the queen’s apartments. They pleaded in vain. “I regret their fate as much as you do,” said he; “but my conscience forbids me to pardon them.” Bouteville seems, from the beginning, to have made up his mind to die, and to have been unfeignedly repentant. While he was in the Bastile, he was attended by Cospean, the bishop of Nantes, one of the most highly gifted preachers of the age. It was by the exhortations of this pious prelate that Bouteville was awakened to a due sense of his crimes. So moved was he by the fervid eloquence of his spiritual guide that, while his trial was yet pending, he said to him, and doubtless with perfect sincerity, “So resigned am I to the will of God, and so ready to do every thing to save my soul, if to save it be possible, that, even more pressingly than my wife now begs for my pardon, I will beg my judges to condemn me to the gibbet, and to be drawn to it on a hurdle, in order to render my death more ignominious and meritorious.” It was not without difficulty that Cospean could dissuade him from seeking salvation by means of this extraordinary self abasement. Contrition alone, and not an act which would cast a stigma on his family, the prelate justly observed, was required to appease the wrath of an offended Deity. Bouteville and his cousin met death with much firmness; the former refused to allow his eyes to be bandaged. On the scaffold a circumstance occurred, which appears to prove that vanity, like hope, sometimes does not leave us till we die. The mustachios of Bouteville were large and handsome, and he put up his hands, as though to save them, when the executioner came to cut off his hair. “What! my son,” exclaimed Cospean, who attended him till the last, “are you still thinking on _this_ world!”