rets in the asylum of love, and our
oaths of war and death amid the intoxication of and of life!"

"Curses on him who saddens the youth of a people! When wrinkles furrow
the brow of the young men, we may confidently say that the finger of a
tyrant has hollowed them out. The other troubles of youth give it despair
and not consternation. Watch those sad and mournful students pass day
after day with pale foreheads, slow steps, and half-suppressed voices.
One would think they fear to live or to advance a step toward the future.
What is there then in France? A man too many."

"Yes," he continued; "for two years I have watched the insidious and
profound progress of his ambition. His strange practices, his secret
commissions, his judicial assassinations are known to you. Princes,
peers, marechals--all have been crushed by him. There is not a family in
France but can show some sad trace of his passage. If he regards us all
as enemies to his authority, it is because he would have in France none
but his own house, which twenty years ago held only one of the smallest
fiefs of Poitou.

"The humiliated parliament has no longer any voice. The presidents of
Nismes, Novion, and Bellievre have revealed to you their courageous but
fruitless resistance to the condemnation to death of the Duke de la
Vallette.

"The presidents and councils of sovereign courts have been imprisoned,
banished, suspended--a thing before unheard of--because they have raised
their voices for the king or for the public.

"The highest offices of justice, who fill them? Infamous and corrupt men,
who suck the blood and gold of the country. Paris and the maritime towns
taxed; the rural districts ruined and laid waste by the soldiers and
other agents of the Cardinal; the peasants reduced to feed on animals
killed by the plague or famine, or saving themselves by
self-banishment--such is the work of this new justice. His worthy agents
have even coined money with the effigy of the Cardinal-Duke. Here are
some of his royal pieces."

The grand ecuyey threw upon the table a score of gold doubloons whereon
Richelieu was represented. A fresh murmur of hatred toward the Cardinal
arose in the apartment.

"And think you the clergy are less trampled on and less discontented? No.
Bishops have been tried against the laws of the State and in contempt of
the respect due to their sacred persons. We have seen, in consequence,
Algerine corsairs commanded by an archbishop. Men of