ate:
He who from irreligion thoroughly purged the state!
Who brought the worship back to altars in decay;
Who built the temples up that in their ashes lay;
True son of them, who, spite of all thy fathers' feats,
Replaced my reverend priests upon their holy seats!
'Twixt Francion and Ibere this difference remains:
One sets them in their seats, and one in iron chains."

[1] Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. [2] Prince of Orange. [3] The Hollanders.

Already, in Mirame, Richelieu had celebrated the fall of Rochelle and of
the Huguenot party, bringing upon the scene the King of Bithynia, who is
taking arms

"To tame a rebel slave,
Perched proudly on his rock washed by the ocean-wave."

As epigraph to Europe there were these lines:--

"All friends of France to this my work will friendly be;
And all unfriends of her will say the author ill;
Yet shall I be content, say, reader, what you will;
The joy of some, the rage of others, pleases me."

The enemies of France did not wait for the comedy, in heroic style, of
Europe in order to frequently say ill of Cardinal Richelieu.

Occupied as he was in governing the affairs of France and of Europe
otherwise than in verse, the cardinal chose out work-fellows; there were
five of them, to whom he gave his ideas and the plan of his piece; he
intrusted to each the duty of writing an act, and "by this means finished
a comedy a month," says Pellisson. Thus was composed the comedy of the
_Tuileries_ and the _Aveugle de Smyrne,_ which were printed in 1638;
Richelieu had likewise taken part in the composition of the _Visionnaires
of Desmarets,_ and supported in a rather remarkable scene the rule of the
three unities against its detractors. A new comedy, the _Grande
Pastorale,_ was in hand. "When he was purposing to publish it," says the
_History of the Academy,_ "he desired M. Chapelain to look over it, and
make careful observations upon it. These observations were brought to
him by M. de Bois-Robert, and, though they were written with much
discretion and respect, they shocked and nettled him to such a degree,
either by their number or by the consciousness they caused him of his
faults, that, without reading them through, he tore them up. But on the
following night, when he was in bed, and all his household asleep, having
thought over the anger h