executing such orders, yet, in spite of all their vigilance, Bucquoy took his measures so skilfully, and carried them into effect with so much secrecy, that, in May 1709, after having been confined for two years, he left his jailors in the lurch, and made good his retreat to Switzerland. As soon as he was in safety, he began to negotiate with the French ministers for his return to France, and the restoration of his property. Failing in this, he journeyed to Holland, and submitted to the allies a project for converting France into a republic, and annihilating arbitrary power. This scheme, too, fell to the ground. It was, nevertheless, beneficial to him, as it gained for him the friendship of General Schulemburg, who, in 1714, introduced him, at Hanover, to George I. The monarch was pleased with his conversation, admitted him to his table, and gave him a pension. Bucquoy lived to nearly the age of ninety. In his latter days, he wholly neglected his dress, suffered his beard to grow, and might well have been mistaken for a squalid mendicant. There was perhaps a spice of madness in Bucquoy, which sufficiently accounts for his eccentric conduct. For the faults, or rather crimes, of the personage who now comes under our notice there was no such excuse. Throughout the whole of his existence, which, like that of Bucquoy, was protracted far beyond the period usually allotted to man, the Marshal Duke of Richelieu displayed as few virtues, and as many vices, as any courtier on record. He had superficial talents, some wit, polished manners, a handsome person, and much bravery; and this is all that can be said for him. On the other hand, he was wholly without honour, morals, and religion; a supporter and adulator of despotism, a political intriguer, who could stoop to use the basest means for the accomplishment of his purposes, a reckless duellist, and a systematic and heartless seducer; he was, in fact, an impersonation of the profligacy and corruption which distinguished the courts of the regent Duke of Orleans and the fifteenth Louis.