While Charles the sixth was labouring under his first attack of insanity, the political feuds and intrigues which distracted his court gave fresh inhabitants to the Bastile. When, in 1392, the dukes of Burgundy and Berry assumed the government, the overthrow of Clisson, the constable of France, and prime minister, necessarily ensued, and in his fall was involved the ministry he had formed. Three of the ministers, La Begue de Villaine, Noviant, and La Rivière, were arrested; Montaigu, the fourth, escaped to Avignon. La Begue, an aged man, who had served in the field with honour under several kings, was soon released; Noviant and La Rivière were reserved as scape goats, and were shut up in the Bastile. Of Noviant nothing important is recorded. La Rivière had enjoyed, in the highest degree, the confidence and friendship of Charles the fifth; so much, indeed, did the monarch value him, that, by his express commands, whenever his favourite died, the royal mausoleum of St. Denis was to be the place of interment. At the accession of Charles the sixth, La Rivière suffered a temporary eclipse; but he shone forth again when the young monarch assumed the reins of government. Noviant and La Rivière were now in the hands of their enemies, and had little to hope; for they were rich enough to excite a hungering after their spoils, and had been too long in possession of power not to be loathed by their rivals. It is the curse and the shame of politics, that they render men insensible to, or, which is still worse, incapable of acknowledging, the merit really owned by those who differ from them in views and principles. Thorough-going politicians are but too apt to affirm what is false, or suppress what is true, provided it will injure their opponents. It follows, as a natural consequence of this unworthy feeling, that, though the two ministers fully vindicated themselves on every article of impeachment, they had but small chance of escaping. Their fate was deemed so inevitable that, more than once during the trial the brute populace rushed to the place of execution, lured by the report that the ministers were about to be brought to the scaffold. Luckily for them, they had a protector, stronger than their innocence. This was the young and lovely princess Jane, countess of Boulogne, the wife of the duke of Berry. Her marriage with the duke had been brought about by the influence of La Rivière, and this circumstance, together with the minister’s estimable qualities, had secured for him her affection and esteem. Her pleadings softened her husband, and thus prevented a deadly sentence from being passed on the fallen statesmen. It is not to be supposed, however, that they were allowed to go unscathed. To declare them guiltless would have been a tacit confession of error, an act which is not to be expected from weak and base minds; and, besides, hatred could not consent to let loose its objects without previously making them feel a touch of its fangs.