RICHELIEU, A TALE OF FRANCE. I advise you that you read The Cardinal's malice and his potency Together: to consider further, that What his high hatred would effect, wants not A minister in his power. SHAKSPEARE. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1829. LONDON: PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. RICHELIEU. CHAPTER I. Showing how a Great Minister made a great mistake. Strange to say, in the manuscript notes from which this true history is derived, there occurs the most extraordinary omission that perhaps ever appeared in the writings of any one pretending to accuracy; and most provoking of all, I have searched memoirs and annals, histories and letters, state papers and private memoranda, and have consulted all sorts of tradition, oral and written, without being enabled to supply from any other source the neglect of the original historian. Who would believe, that, after having interested the reader so deeply in the character of Jacques Chatpilleur, _Cuisinier Aubergiste_, the writer of the above-mentioned notes would be so inconsiderate, so stupid, so disappointing, as not to say one word concerning the farther progress of the redoubtable _vivandier_ on that night, wherein he achieved the two famous victories recorded in the last volume. But so it is: instead of giving us a pathetic account of the scanty supper he at length contrived to furnish forth for the noble prisoner, or of satisfying our curiosity in regard to the means he employed to appease the wrath of the Governor, the notes skip over the farther proceedings of that entire night, and bring us at once upon the Count de Blenau's levee the next morning; entering into very minute details concerning the difficulties he encountered in arranging his mustaches, buttoning his pourpoint, &c. without assistance; all of which I shall pass over as contemptible and irrelevant, and below the dignity of authentic history.