All this Sully
witnessed in his declining years, and he witnessed, too, the
rapid rise to the greatest power and dignity in the State of that
Florentine adventurer, Concino Concini--now bearing the title of
Marshal d'Ancre--who had so cunningly known how to profit by a
Queen's jealousy and a King's indiscretions.
As for the miserable Ravaillac, it is pretended that he
maintained under torture and to the very hour of his death that
he had no accomplices, that what he had done he had done to
prevent an unrighteous war against Catholicism and the Pope--
which was, no doubt, the falsehood with which those who used him
played upon his fanaticism and whetted him to their service. I
say "pretended" because, after all, complete records of his
examinations are not discoverable, and there is a story that when
at the point of death, seeing himself abandoned by those in whom
perhaps he had trusted, he signified a desire to confess, and did
so confess; but the notary Voisin, who took his depositions in
articulo mortis, set them down in a hand so slovenly as to be
afterwards undecipherable.
That may or may not be true. But the statement that when the
President du Harlay sought to pursue inquiries into certain
allegations by a woman named d'Escoman, which incriminated the
Duc d'Epernon, he received a royal order to desist, rests upon
sound authority.
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