He had, as he asserted, several times requested of his Majesty that he might be permitted to withdraw entirely from the Court and finish his days in retirement and in the bosom of his family, but this favour had constantly been denied.
As a last effort he had then represented the deplorable state of his health, and entreated that he might be permitted to travel in order to regain his strength, leaving his wife and children at Marcoussis; a favour which also was not only refused, but the refusal rendered doubly bitter by a prohibition either to see or correspond with his daughter, whose safety was at that moment endangered by the menaces of the Queen.
He then entered briefly into the circumstances of the conspiracy, and concluded by declaring that no attempt upon the life either of the sovereign or the Dauphin had ever been contemplated by himself or by any of his accomplices.[288] Such was the defence of the dishonoured old man who had placed himself beyond the pale of sympathy by his own degrading marriage.

Yet he was still a father; and who shall decide that the shame which in his own case had been silenced by the voice of passion, did not crush him with double violence when it involved the reputation of his child?
Who shall say that he had not, in the throbbing recesses of his wrung heart, mourned with an undying remorse the fault of which he had himself been guilty, and felt that it was visited in vengeance upon the dearest object of his paternal love?
Contemporary historians waste not a word upon the ruined noble, the disappointed partisan, and the disgraced father; yet the scene must have been a pitiable one in the midst of which he stood an attainted criminal, blighted in every affection and in every hope, the creditor of his King, and the victim of his paternal ambition.
The sentence of the Parliament was pronounced on the 2nd of February.
The Comtes d'Auvergne and d'Entragues were condemned to death for the crime of _lese-majeste_, and Madame de Verneuil to imprisonment in the convent of Beaumont, near Tours, until more ample information could be obtained of the exact extent of her participation; and meanwhile she was to be prohibited from holding any communication save with the sisterhood.
On the same day, the sentence having been instantly communicated to Madame d'Entragues, with the information that the King was about to repair to the chapel of the palace to attend mass, she hastened, accompanied by her daughter Marie de Balzac,[289] to the Tuileries, where the two unfortunate women threw themselves on their knees before Henry as he entered the grand gallery, and with tears and sobs entreated mercy, the one for her husband, and the other for her father.

The monarch burst into tears as he saw them at his feet.

He could not forget that the mourners thus prostrate before him were the mother and the sister of the woman whom he still loved, and as he raised them from the ground he said soothingly: "You shall see that I am indulgent--I will convene a council this very day.

Go, and pray to God to inspire me with right resolutions, while I proceed in my turn to mass with the same intention." [290] The King kept his word.