wbreakers from
those days to these--invent some quibble and screen them with it. But
his method was sharper and shorter. He seized both, and executed both on
the Place de la Greve--the place of execution for the vilest
malefactors.

No doubt that under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste
there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that
they hold legal forms not a means, but an end; these will cry out
against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that under the
present palaver of the "sensationist" caste, the old ladies of both
sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament
this proceeding as cruel. But for this act, if for no other, an earnest
man's heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman. The
man had a spine. To his mind crime was not mere misfortune: crime was
_crime_.

Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it: it might cost him
dear to fight it. But he was not a modern "smart" lawyer to seek
popularity by screening criminals; nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer
his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of
law; nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of
politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the
criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between
him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was not
cruel, but merciful. In the eighteen years before Richelieu's
administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years
after Richelieu's death nearly a thousand thus perished; but during his
whole administration, duelling was checked completely. Which policy was
tyrannical? Which policy was cruel?

The hatred of the serf-mastering caste toward their new ruler grew
blacker and blacker, but he never flinched. The two brothers Marillac,
proud of birth, high in office, endeavored to stir revolt as in their
good days of old. The first, who was keeper of the seals, Richelieu
threw into prison; with the second, who was a marshal of France,
Richelieu took another course. For this marshal had added to revolt
things more vile and more insidiously hurtful: he had defrauded the
government in army contracts. Richelieu tore him from his army and put
him on trial. The Queen-Mother, whose pet he was, insisted on his
liberation. Marillac himself blubbered that it "was all about a little
straw and hay, a matter for which a