is minister's to shorten his cabinet labours, and to have at hand a
screen, when that useful contrivance was requisite; the other, the
terrific effects of an agent setting up to be a politician on his own
account, against that of his master.

Richelieu's confessor was one Father Joseph; but this man was designed
to be employed rather in state-affairs, than in those which concerned
his conscience. This minister, who was never a penitent, could have
none. Father Joseph had a turn for political negotiation, otherwise he
had not been the cardinal's confessor; but this turn was of that sort,
said the nuncio Spada, which was adapted to follow up to the utmost the
views and notions of the minister, rather than to draw the cardinal to
his, or to induce him to change a tittle of his designs. The truth is,
that Father Joseph preferred going about in his chariot on ministerial
missions, rather than walking solitarily to his convent, after listening
to the unmeaning confessions of Cardinal Richelieu. He made himself so
intimately acquainted with the plans and the will of this great
minister, that he could venture at a pinch to act without orders: and
foreign affairs were particularly consigned to his management. Grotius,
when Swedish ambassador, knew them both. Father Joseph, he tells us, was
employed by Cardinal Richelieu to open negotiations, and put them in a
way to succeed to his mind, and then the cardinal would step in, and
undertake the finishing himself. Joseph took businesses in hand when
they were green, and, after ripening them, he handed them over to the
cardinal. In a conference which Grotius held with the parties, Joseph
began the treaty, and bore the brunt of the first contest. After a warm
debate, the cardinal interposed as arbitrator: "A middle way will
reconcile you," said the minister, "and as you and Joseph can never
agree, I will now make you friends."[220]

That this was Richelieu's practice, appears from another similar
personage mentioned by Grotius, but one more careless and less cunning.
When the French ambassador, Leon Brulart, assisted by Joseph, concluded
at Ratisbon a treaty with the emperor's ambassador, on its arrival the
cardinal unexpectedly disapproved of it, declaring that the ambassador
had exceeded his instructions. But Brulart, who was an old statesman,
and Joseph, to whom the cardinal confided his most secret views, it was
not supposed could have committed such a gross error; and it was rathe