of the King. Should you say
that this non-committal, agreeable, and amiable politician--who
quarrelled with nobody, and revealed nothing to anybody; who had cheated
all parties by turns--was the man to save France, to extricate his
country from all the evils to which I have alluded, to build up a great
throne (even while he who sat upon it was utterly contemptible) and make
that throne the first in Europe, and to establish absolutism as one of
the needed forces of the seventeenth century?

Yet so it was; and his work was all the more difficult when the
character of the King is considered. Louis XIII. was a different kind of
man from his father Henry IV. and his grandson Louis XIV. He had no
striking characteristics but feebleness and timidity and love of ignoble
pleasures. He had no ambitions or powerful passions; was feeble and
sickly from a child,--ruled at one time by his mother, and then by a
falconer; and apparently taking but little interest in affairs of state.

But if it was difficult to gain ascendency over such a frivolous and
inglorious Sardanapalus, it was easy to retain it when this ascendency
was once acquired. For Richelieu made him comprehend the dangers which
menaced his life and his throne; that some very able man must be
intrusted with supreme delegated power, who would rule for the benefit
of him he served,--a servant, and yet a master; like Metternich in
Austria, after the wars of Napoleon,--a man whose business and aim were
to exalt absolutism on a throne. Moreover, he so complicated public
affairs that his services were indispensable. Nobody could fill
his place.

Also, it must be remembered that the King was isolated, and without
counsellors whom he could trust. After the death of De Luynes he had no
bosom friend. He was surrounded with perplexities and secret enemies.
His mother, who had been regent, defied his authority; his brothers
sought to wear his crown; the nobles conspired against his throne; the
Protestants threatened another civil war; the parliaments thought only
of retaining their privileges; the finances were disordered; the
treasures which Henry IV. had accumulated had been squandered in bribing
the great nobles; foreign enemies had invaded the soil of France; evils
and dangers were accumulating on every side, with such terrific force as
to jeopardize the very existence of the monarchy; and one necessity
became apparent, even to the weak mind of the King,--that he must
delegate