Now, the enlightened and assiduous negotiator serves not only to discover all projects and cabals by which coalitions may arise against his prince in the country where he is sent to negotiate, but also to dissipate their very beginnings by giving timely advice. It is easy to destroy even the greatest enterprises at their birth; and as they often require several springs to give them motion, it can hardly be possible for a hostile intrigue to ripen without knowledge of it coming to the ears of an attentive negotiator living in the place where it is being hatched. The able negotiator will know how to profit by the various dispositions and changes which arise in the country where he lives, not merely in order to frustrate designs hostile to the interests of his master, but also for the positive and fruitful purpose of bringing to an apt result those other designs which may work to his advantage. By his industry and application he may himself produce changes of opinion favourable to the office which he has to discharge; indeed, if he do but once in an apt moment catch the tide at the flood he may confer a benefit on his prince a hundredfold greater than any expense in treasure or personal effort which he may have put forth. Now if a monarch should wait, before sending his envoys to countries near and far, until important events occur--as for instance, until it is a question of hindering the conclusion of some treaty which confers advantage on an enemy Power, or a declaration of war against an ally which would deprive the monarch himself of the assistance of that very ally for other purposes--it will be found that the negotiators, sent thus at the eleventh hour on urgent occasions, have no time to explore the terrain or to study the habits of mind of the foreign court or to create the necessary liaisons or to change the course of events already in full flood, unless indeed they bring with them enormous sums whose disbursement must weigh heavily on the treasury of their master, and which run the risk, in truth, of being paid too late. [Sidenote: _Cardinal Richelieu._] Cardinal Richelieu, whom I set before me as the model for all statesmen, to whom France owes a very great debt, maintained a system of unbroken diplomacy in all manner of countries, and beyond question he thus drew enormous advantage for his master. He bears witness to this truth in his own political testament, speaking thus:--