The third great force which Richelieu crushed was the parliament of Paris.  It had the privilege of registering the decrees of the King; and hence was a check, the only check, on royal authority,—­unless the King came in person into the assembly, and enforced his decree by what was called a “bed of justice.”  This body, however, was judicial rather than legislative; made up of pedantic and aristocratic lawyers, who could be troublesome.  We get some idea of the humiliation of this assembly of lawyers and nobles from the speech of Omer Talon,—­the greatest lawyer of the realm,—­when called upon to express the sentiments of his illustrious body to the King, at a “bed of justice”:  “Happy should we be, most gracious sovereign, if we could obtain any favor worthy of the honor which we derive from your majesty’s presence; but the entry of your sacred person into our assembly unfits us for our functions.  And inasmuch as the throne on which you are seated is a light that dazzles us, bow, if it please you, the heavens which you inhabit, and after the example of the Eternal Sovereign, whose image you bear, condescend to visit us with your gracious mercy.”

What a contrast to this servile speech was the conduct of the English parliament about this time, in its memorable resistance to Charles I.; and how different would have been the political destinies of the English people, if Stratford, just such a man as Richelieu, had succeeded in his schemes!  But in England the parliament was backed by the nation,—­at least by the middle classes.  In France the people had then no political aspirations; among them a Cromwell could not have arisen, since a Cromwell could not have been sustained.

Thus Richelieu, by will and genius, conquered all his foes in order to uphold the throne, and thus elevate the nation; for, as Sir James Stephen says, “the grandeur of the monarchy and the welfare of France with him were but convertible terms.”  He made the throne the first in Europe, even while he who sat upon it was personally contemptible.  He gave lustre to the monarchy, while he himself was an unarmed priest.  It was a splendid fiction to make the King nominally so powerful, while really he was so feeble.  But royalty was not a fiction under his successor.  How respectable did Richelieu make the monarchy!  What a deep foundation did he lay for royalty under Louis XIV.!  What a magnificent inheritance did he bequeath to that monarch!  “Nothing was done for forty years which he had not foreseen and prepared.  His successor, Mazarin, only prospered so far as he followed out his instructions; and the star of Louis XIV. did not pale so long as the policy which Richelieu bequeathed was the rule of his public acts.”  The magnificence of Louis was only the sequel of the energy and genius of Richelieu; Versailles was really the gift of him who built the Palais Royal.