have no occasion to trouble yourself about the state of the kingdom; it will manage very well without your services.  Whence, pray, have you been able to amass so much money?  My lord, my brother of Berry and myself have not so much between us three.  Away from my presence, and let me see you no more!  If I had not a respect for myself, I would have your other eye put out.”  Clisson went out, mounted his horse, returned to his house, set his affairs in order, and departed, with two attendants, to his strong castle of Montlhery.  The two dukes were very sorry that they had not put him under arrest on the spot.  The rupture came to a climax.  Of the king’s four other councillors one escaped in time; two were seized and thrown into prison; the fourth, Bureau de la Riviere was at his castle of Auneau, near Chartres, honored and beloved by all his neighbors.  Everybody urged him to save himself.  “If I were to fly or hide myself,” said he, “I should acknowledge myself guilty of crimes from which I feel myself free.  Here, as elsewhere, I am at the will of God; He gave me all I have, and He can take it away whensoever He pleases.  I served King Charles of blessed memory, and also the king, his son; and they recompensed me handsomely for my services.  I will abide the judgment of the parliament of Paris touching what I have done according to my king’s commands as to the affairs of the realm.”  He was told that the people sent to look for him were hard by, and was asked, “Shall we open to them?” “Why not?” was his reply.  He himself went to meet them, and received them with a courtesy which they returned.  He was then removed to Paris, where he was shut up with his colleagues in the Louvre.

Their trial before parliament was prosecuted eagerly, especially in the case of the absent De Clisson, whom a royal decree banished from the kingdom “as a false and wicked traitor to the crown, and condemned him to ’pay a hundred thousand marks of silver, and to forfeit forever the office of constable.’” It is impossible in the present day to estimate how much legal justice there was in this decree; but, in any case, it was certainly extreme severity to so noble and valiant a warrior who had done so much for the safety and honor of France.  The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry and many barons of the realm signed the decree; but the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, refused to have any part in it.  Against the other councillors of the king the prosecution was continued, with fits and starts of determination, but in general with slowness and uncertainty.  Under the influence of the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, the parliament showed an inclination towards severity; but Bureau de la Riviere had warm friends, and amongst others, the young and beautiful Duchess of Berry, to whose marriage he had greatly contributed, and John Juvenal des Ursins, provost of the tradesmen of Paris, one of the men towards whom the king and the populace felt the highest esteem and confidence.  The