rom Flanders and Germany, which the minister
always insisted upon seeing, however bitter they might be to him. In this
respect, he affected a philosophy which he was far from possessing, and
to deceive those around him he would sometimes pretend that his enemies
were not wholly wrong, and would outwardly laugh at their pleasantries;
but those who knew his character better detected bitter rage lurking
under this apparent moderation, and knew that he was never satisfied
until he had got the hostile book condemned by the parliament to be
burned in the Place de Greve, as "injurious to the King, in the person of
his minister, the most illustrious Cardinal," as we read in the decrees
of the time, and that his only regret was that the author was not in the
place of his book--a satisfaction he gave himself whenever he could, as
in the case of Urbain Grandier.

It was his colossal pride which he thus avenged, without avowing it even
to himself--nay, laboring for a length of time, sometimes for a whole
twelvemonth together, to persuade himself that the interest of the State
was concerned in the matter. Ingenious in connecting his private affairs
with the affairs of France, he had convinced himself that she bled from
the wounds which he received. Joseph, careful not to irritate his
ill-temper at this moment, put aside and concealed a book entitled
'Mystres Politiques du Cardinal de la Rochelle'; also another, attributed
to a monk of Munich, entitled 'Questions quolibetiques, ajustees au temps
present, et Impiete Sanglante du dieu Mars'. The worthy advocate Aubery,
who has given us one of the most faithful histories of the most eminent
Cardinal, is transported with rage at the mere title of the first of
these books, and exclaims that "the great minister had good reason to
glorify himself that his enemies, inspired against their will with the
same enthusiasm which conferred the gift of rendering oracles upon the
ass of Balaam, upon Caiaphas and others, who seemed most unworthy of the
gift of prophecy, called him with good reason Cardinal de la Rochelle,
since three years after their writing he reduced that town; thus Scipio
was called Africanus for having subjugated that PROVINCE!" Very little
was wanting to make Father Joseph, who had necessarily the same feelings,
express his indignation in the same terms; for he remembered with
bitterness the ridiculous part he had played in the siege of Rochelle,
which, though not a province like