Amongst the earliest members of the Academy the cardinal had placed his most habitual and most intimate literary servants, Bois-Robert, Desmarets, Colletet, all writers for the theatre, employed by Richelieu in his own dramatic attempts.  Theatrical representations were the only pleasure the minister enjoyed, in accord with the public of his day.  He had everywhere encouraged this taste, supporting with marked favor , Hardy and the Theatre Parisien.  With his mind constantly exercised by the wants of the government, he soon sought in the theatre a means of acting upon the masses.  He had already foreseen the power of the press; he had laid hands on Doctor Renaudot’s Gazette de France; King Louis XIII. often wrote articles in it; the manuscript exists in the National Library, with some corrections which appear to be Richelieu’s.  As for the theatre, the cardinal aspired to try his own hand at the work; his literary labors were nearly all political pieces; his tragedy of Mirame, to which he attached so much value, and which he had represented at such great expense for the opening of his theatre in the Palais-Cardinal, is nothing but one continual allusion, often bold even to insolence, to Buckingham’s feelings towards Anne of Austria.  The comedy, in heroic style, of Europe, which appeared in the name of Desmarets, after the cardinal’s death, is a political allegory touching the condition of the world.  Francion and Ibere contend together for the favors of Europe, not without, at the same time, paying court to the Princess Austrasia (Lorraine).  All the cardinal’s foreign policy, his alliances with Protestants, are there described in verses which do not lack a certain force:  Germanique (the emperor) pleads the cause of Ibere with Europe:—­

“No longer can he brook to gaze on such as these,
Destroyers of the shrines, foes of the Deities,
By Francion evoked from out the Frozen Main,[1]
That he might cope with us and equal war maintain.

EUROPE.

O, call not by those names th’ indomitable race,
Who ’midst my champions hold honorable place. 
Unlike to us, they own no shrine, no sacrifice;
But still, unlike Ibere, they use no artifice;
About the Gods they speak their mind as seemeth best,
Whilst he, with pious air, still keepeth me opprest;
Through them I hold mine own, from harm and insult free,
Their errors I deplore, their valor pleases me. 
What was that noble king,[2] that puissant conqueror,
Who through thy regions, like a mighty torrent, tore? 
Who marched with giant strides along the path of fame,
And, in the hour of death, left victory with his name? 
What are those gallant chiefs, who from his ashes rose,
Whom still, methinks, his shade assists against their foes?

          [1] The Swedes. [2] Gustavus Adolphus.