"Ha!" said the minister, with a grave, stern face, "Monsieur de Bourbonne thinks he can play with me, does he? and now he fancies he has got his reward. But we must talk more of this when I have some leisure. At present, that little black line there," he continued, pointing toward Rochelle, "occupies much of my thoughts. The battery has not yet ceased firing. These men of trumpet and broad-sword, Monsieur Langdale, attribute more virtue to gunpowder and cannon-balls than I do. There are much more efficient elements in war." "Indeed, your Eminence!" exclaimed Edward: "may I ask what?" "The impudent young cur," said one of the old officers near, to another, in a low voice, "talks to the cardinal as if he were his bottle-companion." Richelieu answered calmly, but with emphasis, "A pickaxe and a shovel, followed up by the movements of those two great officers, Pestilence and Famine. When you announced in Rochelle, Master Langdale, the coming of Lord Denbigh's fleet, and those wise men of the East refused to receive it in their port, they little thought, I ween, that those two mighty commanders would be so soon amongst them. But how was it," he continued, changing his tone and speaking rapidly, "that they dared, in such perilous circumstances, to send away King Charles's ships upon the pretext that they had not been warned, when you yourself had warned them?" "Your Eminence's pardon," answered Edward; "but Master Jargeau, who of course told you all this, should also have said that I had not been an hour in Rochelle before I had my head broken, and lay for nearly a week incapable of delivering any of my letters. It was a pretext, as your Eminence calls it; but the Rochellois had really not been warned when Lord Denbigh's fleet arrived." "You are mistaken, young man," said Richelieu, with a slight curl of the lip: "you jump at your conclusions too rapidly. There have been more Jargeaus than one in Rochelle; and this one, though a very serviceable fellow, I am told, never saw me in his life. Ay, it is a pity that he would not keep his neck out of the noose; but he forced us to hang him,--which was a severe loss to the king's service. He was in the case of those men who, as the Scriptures say, are exceedingly fond of serving both God and mammon. God abandoned him, and mammon could not save him; for though he offered Bassompierre the whole value of a cargo of fish he had contrived to get into Rochelle,--and every fish was worth an ounce of gold, be it remarked,--Bassompierre, whose intelligence is very good, seized the gold where he had hidden it, and hanged him according to proclamation."