Richelieu’s confessor was one Father Joseph; but this man was designed to be employed rather in state-affairs, than in those which concerned his conscience.  This minister, who was never a penitent, could have none.  Father Joseph had a turn for political negotiation, otherwise he had not been the cardinal’s confessor; but this turn was of that sort, said the nuncio Spada, which was adapted to follow up to the utmost the views and notions of the minister, rather than to draw the cardinal to his, or to induce him to change a tittle of his designs.  The truth is, that Father Joseph preferred going about in his chariot on ministerial missions, rather than walking solitarily to his convent, after listening to the unmeaning confessions of Cardinal Richelieu.  He made himself so intimately acquainted with the plans and the will of this great minister, that he could venture at a pinch to act without orders:  and foreign affairs were particularly consigned to his management.  Grotius, when Swedish ambassador, knew them both.  Father Joseph, he tells us, was employed by Cardinal Richelieu to open negotiations, and put them in a way to succeed to his mind, and then the cardinal would step in, and undertake the finishing himself.  Joseph took businesses in hand when they were green, and, after ripening them, he handed them over to the cardinal.  In a conference which Grotius held with the parties, Joseph began the treaty, and bore the brunt of the first contest.  After a warm debate, the cardinal interposed as arbitrator:  “A middle way will reconcile you,” said the minister, “and as you and Joseph can never agree, I will now make you friends."[220]

That this was Richelieu’s practice, appears from another similar personage mentioned by Grotius, but one more careless and less cunning.  When the French ambassador, Leon Brulart, assisted by Joseph, concluded at Ratisbon a treaty with the emperor’s ambassador, on its arrival the cardinal unexpectedly disapproved of it, declaring that the ambassador had exceeded his instructions.  But Brulart, who was an old statesman, and Joseph, to whom the cardinal confided his most secret views, it was not supposed could have committed such a gross error; and it was rather believed that the cardinal changed his opinions with the state of affairs, wishing for peace or war as they suited the French interests, or as he conceived they tended to render his administration necessary to the crown.[221] When Brulart, on his return from his embassy, found this outcry raised against him, and not a murmur against Joseph, he explained the mystery; the cardinal had raised this clamour against him merely to cover the instructions which he had himself given, and which Brulart was convinced he had received, through his organ, Father Joseph; a man, said he, who has nothing of the Capuchin but the frock, and nothing of the Christian but the name:  a mind so practised in artifices, that he could do nothing without deception:  and during the whole of the