ickly, the
sky is overcast on all sides, the tempest beats upon us in all
directions, and from no quarter whatever does a single ray of good
fortune shine upon us. Amidst all this darkness, did the cardinal see
less clearly? Did he lose his head during all this tempest? Did he not
still hold the helm in one hand, and the compass in the other? Did he
throw himself into the boat to save his life? Nay, if the great ship he
commanded were to be lost, did he not show that he was ready to die
before all the rest? Was it luck that drew him out of this labyrinth,
or was it his own prudence, steadiness, and magnanimity? Our enemies are
fifteen leagues from Paris, and his are inside it. Every day come
advices that they are intriguing there to ruin him. France and Spain,
so to speak, have conspired against him alone. What countenance was kept
amidst all this by the man who they said would be dumbfounded at the
least ill-success, and who had caused Le Havre to be fortified in order
to throw himself into it at the first misfortune? He did not make a
single step backward all the same. He thought of the perils of the
state, and not of his own; and the only change observed in him all
through was that, whereas he had not been wont to go out but with an
escort of two hundred guards, he walked about, every day, attended by
merely five or six gentlemen. It must be owned that adversity borne with
so good a grace and such force of character is worth more than a great
deal of prosperity and victory. To me he did not seem so great and so
victorious on the day he entered La Rochelle as then; and the journeys he
made from his house to the arsenal seem to me more glorious for him than
those which he made beyond the mountains, and from which he returned with
the triumphs of Pignerol and Suza."

This was Cardinal Richelieu's distinction, that all his contemporaries,
in the same way as Voiture, identified the mishaps and the successes of
their country with his own fortunes, and that upon him alone were fixed
the eyes of Europe, whether friendly or hostile, when it supported or
when it fought against France.

For four years the war was carried on with desperation by land and sea in
the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy, with alternations of success
and reverse. The actors disappeared one after another from the scene;
the emperor, Ferdinand II., had died on the 15th of February, 1637;--the
election of his son, Ferdinand III., had