"nothing but the name and the figure of a king," _and that for a time only_; for as soon as he has ridded _himself of you ... and of me! ... he means to take the helm and steer the Ship of State in his own name_. Monsieur depicted the new "Mayor of the Palace" actually reigning in overburdened, crushed, and oppressed France, whom he has ruined and whose blood he has sucked pitilessly and without shame. In his own person he has consumed more than two hundred millions since he took the rule of your affairs ... and he expends daily, in his own house, ten times more than you do in yours.... Let me tell you what I have seen! In your kingdom not one third of your subjects eat bread made of wheat flour; another third eats bread made of oats; and another third not only is reduced to beggary, but it is languishing in need so crying that some are actually starving to death; those who are not dying of hunger are prolonging their lives with acorns, herbs, and like substances, like the lower animals. And they who are least to be pitied among these last are living on bran and on blood which they pick up in the gutters in front of the butchers' shops. I have seen these things with my own eyes, and in different parts of the country, since I left Paris. In this Monsieur told the truth. The peasant had come to that point of physical degradation. But his sufferings could not be diminished by provoking a civil war, and Richelieu did not fail to make the fact plain in the polemics of the _Recueil_, written under his supervision--when it was not written in his own hand. He (Richelieu) defended his policy tooth and nail, he justified his millions, his accumulated official honours. One of Monsieur's letters bears copious notes made throughout its length and breadth in the Cardinal's own hand. Without any of the scruples of false shame, he inspired long factums to the glory of the Prime Minister of France. In the pages inspired by him there are passages of peculiar inhumanity. In one place, justifying the King for the treatment inflicted upon his mother, he says that "the pain of the nine months that she carried him would have been sold by her at too high a price, had the King, because of it, been forced to let her set fire to his kingdom."[25] Other passages are equally heartless: "Do they blame the Prime Minister for his riches?--and if the King had seen fit to give him more? The King is free to give or to take away. Can he not act his pleasure; who has the right to say him nay?" The _Recueil_ shows passages teeming with cynical and pampered pride. In favour of himself Richelieu wrote: