Another lesson might Buckingham derive in the crowded _salons_> of the Palais Cardinal--the patronage of letters. Richelieu admitted to intimacy the most eminent authors of the day; and so much did he enjoy their society, that his chief physician, Monsieur Caton, used to say to him, when prescribing for the Cardinal:--"Sir, we will do all that is in our power; but all my remedies will be useless, if you do not add to them a drachm of Boisrobert;"--Boisrobert being a writer whose works are long since forgotten, but whose powers of telling well the news of the court and city used to charm the Cardinal. In the conversation of men of letters, Richelieu found, indeed, his greatest solace; and nothing gave him greater satisfaction than a victory argument, or a success in _repartée_.[213] In the Chamber of the Palais Cardinal might be heard poets reciting their unpublished verses, or going away richly paid and praised when their productions were approved. “Une Salle de Spectacle,” as it was called, was erected by the Cardinal in his palace, and five favourite authors, Corneille, Boisrobert, Colletet, D’Estoile, and Robron, were employed to work out into a dramatic form the poetical conceptions of their patron. Neither was this great minister content with lavishing his individual bounty upon men of genius; he formed the plan of the Academy of Paris, an institution which was to give laws to literature, and the notion of which originated in a private society of distinguished men who met together to converse, and to communicate their works. In this extension of his powerful aid to letters, Richelieu found an obstacle which Buckingham was not destined to encounter. Louis XIII. hated every species of study, and despised that which he had not intellect to appreciate. Charles, on the other hand, was intelligent and inquiring. His education had been carefully attended to; and his taste for the arts introduced a degree of refinement into English society such as this country had never before beheld. Footnote 213: Petilot, x., 126. It may easily be conceived with what intense curiosity, mingled, perhaps, with a spirit of rivalry, Buckingham must have regarded his introduction to Richelieu, and how extended a notion of the power of a minister he must have received during his notable, though brief, sojourn in France.