Vialart, Bishop of Avranches, a contemporary, remarks that the great minister was accustomed, in dealing with those nobles who had any real pretensions, to grant them even more than they could rightly claim; but, if they showed themselves insensible to such conduct, from that moment he had no mercy on them. It was a part of his system, also, to teach one to betray another. The weaknesses of the men with whom he had to do served him as much as their strength. The art of fathoming the characters of those who surround us, and the science of applying their strong qualities against our enemies and using their weaknesses against themselves, is the great secret of ambition. By it, every usurper has risen to power; by it, most have maintained themselves in authority; and when they have fallen, it has been more frequently by a mistake in the character of others than by want of force in their own. It may seem a Machiavelian axiom; but, had I the wisdom of the great Florentine, I should not be at all ashamed of being compared, even in one short passage, to that wise, virtuous, much-misunderstood man. The axiom, however, applies as closely to nations as to individuals. It resolves itself simply into this:--Who knows a nation best will rule that nation best. We have a thousand illustrations of the fact; and Richelieu certainly knew the French nation--that is to say when speaking of those times--knew the nobility, as well as man could know them,--in the mass, and individually; and, whenever it suited his purpose to be stern, he knew no pity, showed no compassion; whenever there was no object in severity, he was kind, or gentle, or sportive. The well-known anecdote of Boisrobert and Mademoiselle de Gournay, when the former induced Richelieu to bestow upon the good old poetess, first a pension of a hundred crowns for herself, then a pension of fifty crowns for her chambermaid, then a pension of twenty crowns for her cat, and, lastly, a pistole for each of the cat's kittens, shows to what extent his good-humor could be carried. On the other hand, the fate of Chalais, Montmorency, Cinq Mars, De Thou, Marillac, and a host of others, gives fearful evidence of his relentless vengeance. At the period of which I write, however, the harsher points of his character had not fully developed themselves: perhaps they were not fully formed; for the minister whom we see represented on the stage, at this very period of his history, as an old and almost decrepit man struggling with an imaginary conspiracy, was really only forty-two years of age, and vigorous in body as in intellect.[2]