This suit was probably meant to answer the double purpose of narrowing his resources and injuring his character. But this mode of proceeding was “too poor, too weak, for her revenge,” and she soon adopted another, which struck directly at his life. His secretary, John Prévost, who seems himself to have had reason for dreading an inquiry into his official conduct, was tampered with, to cause the ruin of his master. Impunity for his own misdoings was to be the price of his new crime. A charge of peculation was brought against Semblançai, and, towards the close of 1526, he was committed to the Bastile. To render his fate certain, the office of sitting in judgment upon him was entrusted to the Chancellor Duprat, who had been his rival, was still his deadliest foe, and was, besides, a devoted tool of the queen mother. As his colleagues, or rather accomplices, Duprat selected, from the various parliaments, men on whose subserviency he could rely. From a tribunal thus infamously constituted, not even a semblance of justice could be expected. On the 9th of August, 1527, Semblançai, who was then in his sixty-second year, was condemned to be hanged; and this sentence was, shortly after, executed on him, at the gibbet of Montfaucon. The popular feeling, with respect to Semblançai, may be considered as at least a strong presumptive proof of his innocence. It is not often that the fall of a finance minister is a subject of sorrow to the multitude. In his case we find one of the few exceptions; for the people beheld his melancholy fate with grief, surprise, and indignation, and they long looked with an evil eye on the malignant princess by whom he was judicially murdered. There is an apparent but not a real discrepancy in the accounts of the behaviour of Semblançai, when his doom was sealed. From the language of Du Bouchet, who represents him as weeping bitterly, and cherishing hopes of pardon till the last moment, a hasty conclusion might be drawn, that the courage of the victim deserted him. But wounded honour and a keen sense of the ingratitude with which a life of services was repaid, might well wring tears from his eyes, though his mind remained unmoved by the fear of death. That his firmness was, in fact, not to be shaken, we have the unexceptionable testimony of Marot, who probably witnessed the calm deportment of Semblançai when going to the scaffold. In his lines, which bear the title of “Du Lieutenant Criminel et de Semblançai,” the poet thus forcibly expresses himself— “When Maillard, hellish judge, led Semblançai On gallows tree to pass from life away, Say which of them most undisturbed was seen?” “I’ll tell you, friend: so blank was Maillard’s mien, He looked as though he saw the direful dart Of death hang o’er him; but so brave a heart Semblançai showed, you would have sworn that he Was leading Maillard to the gallows tree.”