convinced himself that Charles
would never be a Catholic, all was broken up; and thus a treaty of
marriage, which had been slowly reared during a period of seven years,
when the flower seemed to take, only contained within itself the seeds
of war.[233]

Olivarez and Richelieu were thorough-paced statesmen, in every respect
the opposites of the elegant, the spirited, and the open Buckingham. The
English favourite checked the haughty Castilian, the favourite of Spain,
and the more than king-like cardinal, the favourite of France, with the
rival spirit of his island, proud of her equality with the continent.

There is a story that the war between England and France was occasioned
by the personal disrespect shown by the Cardinal-Duke Richelieu to the
English Duke, in the affronting mode of addressing his letters. Gerbier
says, the world are in a ridiculous mistake about this circumstance. The
fact of the letters is true, since Gerbier was himself the secretary on
this occasion. It terminated, however, differently than is known.
Richelieu, at least as haughty as Buckingham, addressed a letter, in a
moment of caprice, in which the word Monsieur was level with the first
line, avoiding the usual space of honour, to mark his disrespect.
Buckingham instantly turned on the cardinal his own invention. Gerbier,
who had written the letter, was also its bearer. The cardinal started at
the first sight, never having been addressed with such familiarity, and
was silent. On the following day, however, the cardinal received Gerbier
civilly, and, with many rhetorical expressions respecting the duke: "I
know," said he, "the power and greatness of a high admiral of England;
the _cannons_ of his great ships make way, and prescribe law more
forcibly than the _canons_ of the church, of which I am a member. I
acknowledge the power of the favourites of great kings, and I am content
to be a minister of state, and the duke's humble servant." This was an
apology made with all the _politesse_ of a Gaul, and by a great
statesman who had recovered his senses.

If ever minister of state was threatened by the prognostics of a fatal
termination to his life, it was Buckingham; but his own fearlessness
disdained to interpret them. The following circumstances, collected from
manuscript letters of the times, are of this nature. After the sudden
and unhappy dissolution of the parliament, popular terror showed itself
in all shapes; and those who did not join