It was not long before he had to begin this work,—­and with the highest,—­with no less a personage than Gaston, Duke of Orleans,—­favorite son of Mary,—­brother of the King.  He who thinks shall come to a higher idea of Richelieu’s boldness, when he remembers that for many years after this Louis was childless and sickly, and that during all those years Richelieu might awake any morning to find Gaston—­King.

In 1626, Gaston, with the Duke of Vendome, half-brother of the King, the Duchess of Chevreuse, confidential friend of the Queen, the Count of Soissons, the Count of Chalais, and the Marshal Ornano, formed a conspiracy after the old fashion.  Richelieu had his hand at their lofty throats in a moment.  Gaston, who was used only as a makeweight, he forced into the most humble apologies and the most binding pledges; Ornano he sent to die in the Bastille; the Duke of Vendome and the Duchess of Chevreuse he banished; Chalais he sent to the scaffold.

The next year he gave the grandees another lesson.  The serf-owning spirit had fostered in France, through many years, a rage for duelling.  Richelieu determined that this should stop.  He gave notice that the law against duelling was revived, and that he would enforce it.  It was soon broken by two of the loftiest nobles in France,—­by the Count of Bouteville-Montmorency and the Count des Chapelles.  They laughed at the law:  they fought defiantly in broad daylight.  Nobody dreamed that the law would be carried out against them.  The Cardinal would, they thought, deal with them as rulers have dealt with serf-mastering law-breakers from those days to these,—­invent some quibble and screen them with it.  But his method was sharper and shorter.  He seized both, and executed both on the Place de Greve,—­the place of execution for the vilest malefactors.

No doubt, that, under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste, there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that they hold legal forms not a means, but an end:  these will cry out against this proceeding as tyrannical.  No doubt, too, that, under the present palaver of the “sensationist” caste, the old ladies of both sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune:  these will lament this proceeding as cruel.  But, for this act, if for no other, an earnest man’s heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman.  The man had a spine.  To his mind crime was cot mere misfortune:  crime was CRIME.  Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it; it might cost him dear to fight it.  But he was not a modern “smart” lawyer, to seek popularity by screening criminals,—­nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law,—­nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer’s mistress.  He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal.  He had the sense to see that this course was not cruel, but merciful.  See that for yourselves.  In the eighteen years before Richelieu’s administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years after Richelieu’s death, nearly a thousand thus perished; but during his whole administration, duelling was checked completely.  Which policy was tyrannical? which policy was cruel?