to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the
pride of the great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to
elevating your majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful
reputation.

I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.

The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that
the union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be
completed also between you in grace. And if, after many years, this
purpose by the malice of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my
consolation to remember how often your majesty has been heard to say
that when I was working most for the honour of the queen, your mother,
she was conspiring for my ruin.

_Of Education_

Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that
they should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose
every subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having
eyes in every part; pride and presumption would be general, and
obedience almost disappear.

Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse
of peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in
rustic ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the
sciences. It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed
only to _chicane_, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace,
but could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences
fitted to oppose than to defend the truth.

Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other
desire than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an
inordinate thirst to drink