master would not whip a lackey."
Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who
take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation's treasure.

To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu
because he would not be her puppet, and he banished her from France
forever.

The high nobles were now exasperated. Gaston fled the country, first
issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke of
Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King's family: by office, as
constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was
defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked
on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the
English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun's murder of Will
Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward's murder of
Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu in his
_Memoirs_, "Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others,
more wise, praised the justice of the King, who preferred the good of
the state to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency."

Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of
Epernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort
than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the
regency, him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of Valette disobeyed
orders in the army, and was executed as a common soldier would have been
for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see if he could not
revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel army; but
Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain court
nobles--pets of the King--Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new plot, and,
to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the Cardinal,
though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his agent, and the
traitors expiated their treason with their blood.

But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris--a court of
justice--filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end, tried
to interpose forms between the master of France and the vermin he was
exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done
something. They might have insisted that the petty quibbles set forth by
the lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution
set forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, an