sh, being unable to see without shame foreigners showing more
care for our welfare than we ourselves show. I know that it will not be
M. de Rohan's fault nor yours that nothing good is done.

"I forgot to tell you that the cardinal is very glad that he is no longer
a bishop, for he has put so many rings in pawn to send munitions to the
islands, that he has nothing remaining wherewith to give the episcopal
benediction. The most zealous amongst us pray God that the sea may
swallow up his person as it has swallowed his goods. As for me, I am not
of that number, for I belong to those who offer incense to the powers
that be." It was as yet a time when the religious fatherland was dearer
than the political; the French Huguenots naturally appealed for aid to
all Protestant nations. It was even now an advance in national ideas to
call the English who had come to the aid of La Rochelle foreigners.

Toiras, meanwhile, still held out in the Fort of St. Martin, and
Buckingham was beginning to "abate somewhat of the absolute confidence he
had felt about making himself master of it, having been so ill-advised as
to write to the king his master that he would answer for it." The proof
of this was that a burgess of La Rochelle, named Laleu, went to see the
king with authority from the Duke of Angouleme, who commanded the army in
his Majesty's absence, and that "he proposed that the English should
retire, provided that the king would have Fort Louis dismantled. The
Duke of Angouleme was inclined to accept this proposal, but the cardinal
forcibly represented all the reasons against it: "It will be said,
perhaps, that if the Island of Re be lost, it will be very difficult to
recover it;" this he allowed, but he put forward, to counterbalance this
consideration, another, that, if honor were lost, it would never be
recovered, and that, if the Island of Re were lost, he considered that
his Majesty was bound to stick to the blockade of Rochelle, and that he
might do so with success. Upon this, his Majesty resolved to push the
siege of Rochelle vigorously, and to give the command to Mylord his
brother; "but Monsieur was tardy as usual, not wanting to serve under the
king when the health of his Majesty might permit him to return to his
army, so that the cardinal wrote to President Le Coigneux, one of the
favorite counsellors of the Duke of Orleans, to say that if imaginary
hydras of that sort were often taking shape in the mind of Monsieu