In the course of a few years Nemours once more, and finally, brought down the wrath of the monarch on his head. He was accused of treason, and Beaujeu was despatched to besiege him in the town of Carlat, to which the duke had retired. Carlat was supposed to be impregnable, and it was provisioned for two or three years. Nemours, nevertheless, surrendered without resistance, on condition that his life should be spared; Beaujeu guaranteed this condition, as did likewise Louis le Graville, lord of Montaigu, and Bonfile le Juge, who enjoyed the royal confidence. The wife of the duke, who was confined in child-bed, died of grief and terror, on seeing her husband become a prisoner. Nemours was conveyed, first, to Pierre-Encise, whence he was removed to the Bastile; where he was subjected to the harshest usage. All his supplications to the king, during two years’ abode in the Bastile, were unavailing; or rather, indeed, seem to have tended to irritate him. The duke had, undoubtedly, been a turbulent subject; but nothing can palliate the infamy of the king’s conduct, after he had Nemours in his power. It is difficult to account for the inveteracy of his hatred. There was no conceivable violation of justice of which he was not guilty. To have broken the pledge solemnly given by his general was little compared with what followed. Such of the judges as seemed inclined to show mercy were threatened and displaced; others were tempted by being promised to share in the spoils of the prisoner; the place where the court held its sittings was more than once arbitrarily changed; and the decent formalities of the law, as well as its essential principles, were contemptuously discarded. No wonder that Nemours was condemned to death. But now a scene opens which casts all the rest into shade, and at which nature shudders. Nothing was omitted that could render death terrible to the duke. The chamber where he confessed to the priest was hung with black; the horse which took him to execution was covered with a housing of the same hue. He was already agonised by the thought that his children, who were little more than infants, were reduced to beggary—but this was not enough. A scaffold was expressly constructed for him to suffer on, with wide openings between the planks, and underneath, clad in white, their heads naked, and their hands bound, were placed his children, that they might be drenched with their parent’s blood. It was on the 4th of August, 1477, that this horrible tragedy was acted.