him, and said:--"Great master! by
your face I conjecture that you know more of this matter than you would
have us believe. I pray you, and indeed I command, that you tell us what
you think and what you know." The coy minister refused, as he says, out of
mere politeness to his more ignorant colleagues; but, being again pressed
by the king, he entered into a history of duelling both in ancient and
modern times. He has not preserved this history in his Memoirs; and, as
none of the ministers or councillors present thought proper to do so, the
world is deprived of a discourse which was, no doubt, a learned and
remarkable one. The result was, that a royal edict was issued, which Sully
lost no time in transmitting to the most distant provinces, with a
distinct notification to all parties concerned that the king was in
earnest, and would exert the full rigour of the law in punishment of the
offenders. Sully himself does not inform us what were the provisions of
the new law; but Father Matthias has been more explicit, and from him we
learn, that the marshals of France were created judges of a court of
chivalry, for the hearing of all causes wherein the honour of a noble or
gentleman was concerned, and that such as resorted to duelling should be
punished by death and confiscation of property, and that the seconds and
assistants should lose their rank, dignity, or offices, and be banished
from the court of their sovereign.[60]

[60] _Le Pere Matthias_, tome ii. livre iv.

But so strong a hold had the education and prejudice of his age upon the
mind of the king, that though his reason condemned, his sympathies
approved the duel. Notwithstanding this threatened severity, the number of
duels did not diminish, and the wise Sully had still to lament the
prevalence of an evil which menaced society with utter disorganisation. In
the succeeding reign the practice prevailed, if possible, to a still
greater extent, until the Cardinal de Richelieu, better able to grapple
with it than Sully had been, made some severe examples in the very highest
classes. Lord Herbert, the English ambassador at the court of Louis XIII.,
repeats, in his letters, an observation that had been previously made in
the reign of Henry IV., that it was rare to find a Frenchman moving in
good society who had not killed his man in a duel. The Abbe Millot says of
this period, that the duel madness made the most terrible ravages. Men had
actually a frenzy for combatin