'Louis, most falsely surnamed the Just, is a prince without honour, and without gratitude!' said he, flinging his empty silver cup upon the table; 'he is at once the slave and the tool of Cardinal Richelieu, whom he hates and fears, and yet obeys--Richelieu, the most stern and bloody minister that ever stained the annals of France!--and now to divert the attention of her people from the intrigues by which he is surrounded, and by which he, a presumptuous priest, has obtained all but the royal authority, he has plunged Louis into this wanton war with the Empire and Lorraine, on the bold plea, ever so pleasing to French vanity, that their frontier shall be the Rhine. Marched by Champagne, and bordered by the Rhine, with Burgundy on one hand, and Luxemburg on the other, doubtless my father's ancient dukedom presents a tempting morsel to our friend M. le Cardinal and his creatures--and to enable them to swallow this morsel with ease, he has poured five armies into Germany and Italy. But our people are brave, bold, and hardy; our valleys are covered by vineyards; our mountains teem with mines of the richest ore, and hence this old Lorraine of ours--this patrimony which we have inherited since the days of the Merovingian kings--forms a prize too valuable to be relinquished to the grasping house of Bourbon: and while we have a rial and a rapier left, with God's help and the Emperor's, we shall defend it!' 'Louis asserts that Lorraine belongs to him, because Charles the Simple united it to France in the tenth century, and made Regnier governor over it.'