I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in order to consult with you.  It appears to be a matter highly deserving your consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the danger of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and is likely further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes.  This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the villages and country districts as well; and it seems impossible to cure this evil or to restrain its progress.  It is true that the temples which were once almost deserted have lately been frequented, and that the religious rites which had been interrupted are again revived; and there is a general demand for animals for sacrificial victims, which for some time past have met with few purchasers.  From all this it is easy to imagine what numbers might be reclaimed from this error if pardon were granted to those who may repent of it.

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CARDINAL RICHELIEU

Political Testament

Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of a noble family, and was at first educated for the profession of arms, but entered the Church in order to become Bishop of Lucon in 1606.  Having come up to Paris to make his way in the world, he was appointed almoner to the young queen Anne of Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for War and for Foreign Affairs.  He received the cardinal’s hat in 1622, and for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was, in everything but name, the Majesty of France.  His mind was bold, unscrupulous, remorseless, and inscrutable.  Yet it was always noble—­the minister who sent so many to the scaffold could truly say that in his vast labours he had but one pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security while he watched night after night.  He was a friend to literature, was founder of the Academy, and was himself a considerable author in history and theology.  His greatest work, “Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu,” which was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his counsel in statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance, exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very high order but an acute faculty for literary expression.  Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.

Retrospect

At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces as if they had been sovereigns themselves.  Every man took his own audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious were considered