do not know to what to attribute this irresolution; it could not, with him, have come from the fertility of his imagination, which is anything but lively.  He was never a warrior, though he was very much the soldier.  He was never a good partyman, though he was engaged in it all his life.  That air of bashfulness and timidity which you see about him in private life was turned in public life into an air of apology.  He always considered himself to need one, which fact, added to his maxims, which do not show sufficient belief in virtue, and to his practice, which was always to get out of affairs with as much impatience as he had shown to get into them, leads me to conclude that he would have done far better to know his own place, and reduce himself to passing, as he might have passed, for the most polite of courtiers and the worthiest (le plus honnete) man, as regards ordinary life, that ever appeared in his century.”

[Illustration:  La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends——­629]

Cardinal de Retz had more wits, more courage, and more resolution than the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; he was more ambitious and more bold; he was, like him, meddlesome, powerless, and dangerous to the state.  He thought himself capable of superseding Cardinal Mazarin, and far more worthy than he of being premier minister; but every time he found himself opposed to the able Italian he was beaten.  All that he displayed, during the Fronde, of address, combination, intrigue, and resolution, would barely have sufficed to preserve his name in history, if he had not devoted his leisure in his retirement to writing his Memoires.  Vigorous, animated, always striking, often amusing, sometimes showing rare nobleness and high-mindedness, his stories and his portraits transport us to the very midst of the scenes he desires to describe and the personages he makes the actors in them.  His rapid, nervous, picturesque style is the very image of that little dark, quick, agile man, more soldier than bishop, and more intriguer than soldier, faithfully and affectionately beloved by his friends, detested by his very numerous enemies, and dreaded by many people, for the causticity of his tongue, long after the troubles of the Fronde had ceased, and he was reduced to be a wanderer in foreign lands, still Archbishop of Paris without being able to set foot in it.  Having retired to Commercy, he fell under Louis XIV.’s suspicion.  Madame de Sevigne, who was one of his best friends, was anxious about him.  “As to our cardinal, I have often thought as you,” she wrote to her daughter; “but, whether it be that the enemies are not in a condition to cause fear, or that the friends are not subject to take alarm, it is certain that there is no commotion.  You show a very proper spirit in being anxious about the welfare of a person who is so distinguished, and to whom you owe so much affection.”  “Can I forget him whom I see everywhere in the story of our misfortunes,” exclaimed Bossuet, in his