two crowns. The true one was to make the queen party the real governors of France.

and her

Whether M. de Thou was ever cognisant of the details of this treaty is a question; that he knew of its existence, and disapproved of it, is certain. He was of a legal, not a military family; and at this time foreign intervention was always courted by the military factions, and disclaimed by the legal ones; but his affection for the queen, his love for her favourite Mme. de Guémenée, and his patriotic desire for peace, to which the cardinal seemed the only obstacle, blinded him to the treasonableness of the domestic part of the conspiracy, though not to its foreign portion.

Such was the state of affairs when, on the 25th of January 1642, the king and the cardinal left Paris to conduct the siege of Perpignan.

France was exhausted by her long warfare; she could supply neither money nor men. Richelieu was obliged to diminish the taxes, and to exchange the offensive for the defensive in all points save one. All forces were to be directed towards the Pyrenees. In his own words, he resolved to "strike no longer at the members, but at the heart of the enemy." Perpignan won, he expected Louis XIII. to cross the Pyrenees, enter Barcelona in state, and proceed to dictate peace at Saragossa.

Richelieu's retinue was more numerous and splendid than that of his sovereign, whom he followed at the distance of a day's journey; for the same resting-place could not accommodate both. From time to time they met in the large towns. On each occasion Richelieu observed the decrease of his own favour and the increase of that of Cinq Mars. More than once the project for the assassination was on the point of completion, but the hand of the favourite trembled. At Narbonne Richelieu's nerves fairly gave way. He declared himself too ill to go further. The king, accompanied by Cinq Mars, joined the camp on the 22d of April.

Many weeks were passed by the cardinal in mortal suspense; but he had a powerful ally at court in the person of Cinq Mars himself, whose triumphant interference, joined to his ignorance and incapacity, wearied out the patience of the king. News of a reverse in Picardy arrived, and Louis XIII. began once more to miss his minister.

Richelieu had left Narbonne on the 27th of May. A few days earlier he dictated (for the abscesses which covered his body and extended to his right arm prevented his writing) a will, in which he bequeathed the Palais Cardinal (now the Palais Royal), and a considerable sum from his own privy purse, to the king. He started in a miserable state of mind and body. Once more

F

fortune seemed to have deserted him, and he might expect to linger out his few remaining days in exile. He proceeded slowly towards Tarascon, where he was sure that the governor of Provence would afford him a refuge. He was overtaken, however, by Chavigny, who arrived from the camp with a letter from Louis XIII., asking advice, begging pardon, and concluding with these words: "Whatever false reports may be spread, I am more attached to you than ever; we have lived together too long to be ever separated; and I wish this to be known to the whole world."

The king received in return a despatch which he little expected. It was a copy of the treasonable treaty with Spain. How it fell into the hands of Richelieu may for ever remain a mystery. M. Michelet, who, as we have seen, is not blinded by the charms of Anne of Austria, ascribes this treachery to the queen. It is certain that, of all the conspirators, she alone was unpunished.

Chavigny found the king at Narbonne, returning ill from the siege. Cinq Mars had imprudently followed his sovereign. When he saw Chavigny, he became aware of his danger. He put off flight till too late. The order for his arrest was extorted from Louis with great difficulty. He attempted to escape, but was discovered hidden in the bed of the wife of a bourgeois; taken, and sent to Montpellier.

Orders were sent to the army for the arrest of De Thou, who was conveyed to Tarascon; and at the same time the Duc de Bouillon was seized in Piedmont, and dispatched to Pignerol.

Louis XIII. left Narbonne immediately, and proceeded to Tarascon, the scene of his first interview with Richelieu. Once more these two august invalids were in each other's presence; each almost on his death-bed, but each implacable as ever in his resentments; each hating and distrusting, but each necessary to the other.

A small bed was placed for the king by the side of that of his minister, who had the generosity and the tact to spare him all reproaches. Louis XIII., in return, laid all the blame upon Cinq Mars, and exhausted himself in expressions of attachment and protestations of fidelity.

Too feeble to return to the camp, the king proceeded to Paris, leaving unlimited powers with Richelieu, who remained in the dismal castle of Tarascon, under the same roof with his victim De Thou; who, in the lower vaults, waited in silence unbroken, save by the monotonous roar of the Rhone, to be led out to death.

The Duke of Orleans was travelling slowly towards Burgundy, expecting Cinq Mars, when he heard of his arrest.

In

his terror, he despatched his creature, the Abbé de la Rivière, with letters to Richelieu, owning his guilt, and offering a complete revelation. The cardinal answered, that plenary confession had a right to absolution both from God and man. Gaston, overjoyed, replied by a detailed accusation of his accomplices. He exaggerated the facts, and even invented imaginary details. In his first panic, he had burnt the original of the treaty with Spain, but he was willing to swear to its contents.

Furnished with this important testimony, Richelieu left Tarascon, on the 17th August, for Lyons.

A few years back there was exhibited in Pall Mall one of Delaroche's fine small pictures, representing the attenuated form of the cardinal, wrapped in his scarlet robes (an appropriate livery for the bloody work he had in hand), reclining on a bed in his gorgeous barge, and towing after him De Thou. The funeral cortège slowly ascended the river, and did not reach Lyons till the 3d of September.

The trial lasted ten days. As usual, the penalty was paid by the inferiors. The Duc de Bouillon escaped by sacrificing Sédan, and Gaston by his base perfidy. However, no persuasions on the part of Richelieu could induce him to confront his associates.

Sentence of death was pronounced upon Cinq Mars and De Thou on the 12th, and executed in the afternoon of the same day. It is said that Louis XIII. drew out his watch at the hour of his favourite's death, and said, "Cher ami doit faire à cette heure-ci une vilaine grimace."

The piety, the chivalrous bearing, and the courage of Cinq Mars and De Thou, during the trial and on the scaffold, blinded the world as to their real guilt. A sort of halo of martyrdom was cast around them. Four or five miles above Tours, on one of the finest reaches of the Loire, stands a castle, still perfect, except that its towers end abruptly, without battlements, a few feet above the curtain. This is the château of Cinq Mars, its towers "razées à la hauteur de l'infamie."

Richelieu left Lyons for Paris immediately after the trial. He could not bear the motion of a carriage. He performed the journey, which lasted five weeks, either by water or in a magnificent litter, fitted up with red damask, containing his bed, a table, and a chair for an occasional visitor. It was carried by relays of eighteen guards. The walls of cities had to be broken down to admit of its passage, and scaffoldings were erected to raise this vast machine to a level with the apartments which were honoured by the occupation of the cardinal-king. On the 17th October he reached Paris, was received with almost royal honours, and immediately retired to Ruel.

Richelieu had indeed reason to triumph. Every day brought tidings of the success of his vast combinations. In the north, and in the Low Countries, the Spanish army was held in check by the Count d'Harcourt and Marshal Guébriant. The princes of the north of Italy, that beautiful land, whose destiny has long been to be torn in pieces by the pretenders to her favour, rejected the continual oppression and interference of the House from which their country was to suffer so much in future ages, and formed an alliance with Savoy and with France. The allies took Tortona on the 25th of November, and thus obtained possession of the Milanais south of the Po. The sovereignty of the province was awarded to Prince Thomas of Savoy, who held it in fief from the crown of France.

In Germany, Torstenson, the last of the successors of Gustavus, drove the Austrians out of Silesia, and a great part of Moravia; and on the 2d November was fought a second battle of Leipsic, as glorious to Sweden as the first. Reinforced by Guébriant, the Swedes subdued nearly the whole of Saxony.

The war in the Pyrenees, the chief object of Richelieu's solicitude, was brought to a successful termination. Both Rousillon and Catalonia became provinces of France. All this glory and power could not give peace of mind to the dying statesman. Since the execution of Cinq Mars, he felt that the king hated him. He dreaded, not the death which was advancing towards him with giant strides, but the knife of the assassin. Ignorant and yet suspicious of the part taken by the king in the late conspiracy, it was Louis XIII. whom he chiefly feared. On the rare occasions when the king visited him, the apartment was filled by his guards, who retained their arms; an unheard-of insult to royalty. He did not yet feel himself safe. He insisted upon the banishment of three of the king's favourite attendantsMessrs. Tilladet, De la Salle, and Desessart, officers of the Royal Guard. Louis XIII resisted long, but in vain, with this consolation, that their pretended disgrace would not last long, as the cardinal's days were numbered.

To lookers-on it seemed, however, an even chance which should precede the other to the tomb. The king's health was failing fast; Richelieu by no means despaired of recovery. He returned to Paris, and on the 15th of November he gave a dramatic entertainment, at which, however, he was not able to be present. The piece, an allegorical tragi-comedy in five acts, was called Europa. In it " Ibère" and "Francion" dispute the hand of the princess "Europa," and it ends with the triumph of "Francion."

On the 28th Richelieu was attacked by violent fever, and spitting of blood. The symptoms increased. On the 2d Decem

ber his life was despaired of. Public prayers were put up in all the churches, and the king had a long conference with the minister to whom he owed so much. After asking the king's protection for his family and descendants, he advised him as to his future policy, recommended Mazarin as his successor, and composed with him an act, afterwards registered by the parliament, which, after recapitulating the various conspiracies in which Gaston had been engaged, excluded him for ever from any share in the government or in the regency, in the event of the king's death.

After the king's departure, Richelieu asked the physicians how long he had to live. Wishing to flatter him, they replied, that "God would work a miracle sooner than suffer the extinction of one who was so necessary to the welfare of France." His niece, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, running in, exclaimed, “Sir, you will not die: a holy woman, a Carmelite nun, has received the revelation." 66 My dear," he said, "we must laugh at all that; we must believe only in the Gospel;" and turning to the physician nearest to him, "Speak to me," he said, "not as a doctor, but as a friend." "Monseigneur," was the reply, "in twenty-four hours you will be dead or cured." "That is speaking out," said Richelieu; "I understand you."

"Here is my

The sacrament was then administered to him. judge," he said, when the consecrated wafer was presented to him,-"my judge, who will soon pronounce my sentence. May he condemn me if, in the course of my ministry, I have had any other aim than the good of the Church and of the State." "Do you forgive your enemies?" said the priest. "I have had none but those of the State," was the reply.

The symptoms continued to increase. He bore them with admirable patience and fortitude. He gave way but for an instant, when bidding adieu to his niece," the being," to use his own words, "whom he had most loved on earth." All around were weeping; for the terrible minister was, by the testimony of his contemporaries, the best master, kinsman, and friend that ever existed.

He preserved the same composure throughout his long agony, which lasted till towards noon on the 4th of December, when, with one deep sigh, his great soul left the wreck of what had been its tenement on earth.

The king whose reign he had made glorious, the people whom he had raised to supremacy, alike were relieved by his death.

Richelieu had trampled on his contemporaries. He could not, therefore, be judged fairly by them. It required the calm estimation of later ages to place him unrivalled as he now stands