Commines accepted the conditions of the treaty; but on his return to his native land, a very natural feeling of hesitation made him recoil from the final accomplishment of the transaction. Louis XI., however, daily pressed him more urgently; the wily monarch could not consent to have tried his powers of seduction in vain. If Commines escaped his grasp, he determined at least to make sure of his money. A councillor of the great council, Master Pierre Clutin, was ordered to proceed to the residence of Jean de Beaune, and, in the king’s name, to seize the 6000 livres which had been entrusted to him by Commines. This was an able and decisive measure. The publicity of this seizure placed Commines in the unpleasant alternative of seeing his practices divulged, without gaining any profit by them, or of securing their advantages only by setting aside the scruples which delayed him. He took the latter and safer course, and during the night of the 7th of August, 1472, he abandoned Burgundy for ever. The king was then at Pont-de-Cè, and there his new servant joined him. Very different opinions have been passed on this act in the life of Commines; some are too severe, and others too indulgent, to be adopted without qualification. Some writers, among whom we may instance Voltaire, seem to have forgotten that in weighing the actions of men, regard should be had to the times in which they lived, and to the daily examples which they had before their eyes; while others appear to have fallen into the opposite error of forgetting that, although equity requires us to take all the circumstances of the case into consideration, there are nevertheless certain acts which a healthy morality cannot wholly absolve. Let us award to Commines all the blame that he merits for his defection, but let us neither exaggerate his fault beyond due measure, nor extenuate it with blind and unreasoning partiality. Would that it were the gravest reproach to be addressed to his memory!