heart; reserved or communicative as it suited his purpose.  This was that arch-intriguer who was seeking all the while, not the sceptre of the King, but the power of the King.  Should you say that this non-committal, agreeable, and amiable politician—­who quarrelled with nobody, and revealed nothing to anybody; who had cheated all parties by turns—­was the man to save France, to extricate his country from all the evils to which I have alluded, to build up a great throne (even while he who sat upon it was utterly contemptible) and make that throne the first in Europe, and to establish absolutism as one of the needed forces of the seventeenth century?

Yet so it was; and his work was all the more difficult when the character of the King is considered.  Louis XIII. was a different kind of man from his father Henry IV. and his grandson Louis XIV.  He had no striking characteristics but feebleness and timidity and love of ignoble pleasures.  He had no ambitions or powerful passions; was feeble and sickly from a child,—­ruled at one time by his mother, and then by a falconer; and apparently taking but little interest in affairs of state.

But if it was difficult to gain ascendency over such a frivolous and inglorious Sardanapalus, it was easy to retain it when this ascendency was once acquired.  For Richelieu made him comprehend the dangers which menaced his life and his throne; that some very able man must be intrusted with supreme delegated power, who would rule for the benefit of him he served,—­a servant, and yet a master; like Metternich in Austria, after the wars of Napoleon,—­a man whose business and aim were to exalt absolutism on a throne.  Moreover, he so complicated public affairs that his services were indispensable.  Nobody could fill his place.

Also, it must be remembered that the King was isolated, and without counsellors whom he could trust.  After the death of De Luynes he had no bosom friend.  He was surrounded with perplexities and secret enemies.  His mother, who had been regent, defied his authority; his brothers sought to wear his crown; the nobles conspired against his throne; the Protestants threatened another civil war; the parliaments thought only of retaining their privileges; the finances were disordered; the treasures which Henry IV. had accumulated had been squandered in bribing the great nobles; foreign enemies had invaded the soil of France; evils and dangers were accumulating on every side, with such terrific force as to jeopardize the very existence of the monarchy; and one necessity became apparent, even to the weak mind of the King,—­that he must delegate his power to some able man, who, though he might rule unscrupulously and tyrannically, would yet be faithful to the crown, and establish the central power for the benefit of his heirs and the welfare of the state.