bodies and societies, yet he studied to oblige individuals, which is sufficient to give you an idea of all the rest.  He had indeed some unaccountable illusions, which he pushed to the utmost extremity.  The most dangerous kind of illusion in State affairs is a sort of lethargy that never happens without showing pronounced symptoms.  The abolishing of ancient laws, the destruction of that golden medium which was established between the Prince and the people, and the setting up a power purely and absolutely despotic, were the original causes of those political convulsions which shook France in the days of our forefathers.

Cardinal de Richelieu managed the kingdom as mountebanks do their patients, with violent remedies which put strength into it; but it was only a convulsive strength, which exhausted its vital organs.  Cardinal Mazarin, like a very unskilful physician, did not observe that the vital organs were decayed, nor had he the skill to support them by the chemical preparations of his predecessor; his only remedy was to let blood, which he drew so plentifully that the patient fell into a lethargy, and our medicaster was yet so stupid as to mistake this lethargy for a real state of health.  The provinces, abandoned to the rapine of the superintendents, were stifled, as it were, under the pressure of their heavy misfortunes, and the efforts they made to shake them off in the time of Richelieu added only to their weight and bitterness.  The Parliaments, which had so lately groaned under tyranny, were in a manner insensible to present miseries by a too fresh and lively remembrance of their past troubles.  The grandees, who had for the most part been banished from the kingdom, were glad to have returned, and therefore took their fill of ease and pleasure.  If our quack had but humoured this universal indolence with soporifics, the general drowsiness might have continued much longer, but thinking it to be nothing but natural sleep, he applied no remedy at all.  The disease gained strength, grew worse and worse, the patient awakened, Paris became sensible of her condition; she groaned, but nobody minded it, so that she fell into a frenzy, whereupon the patient became raving mad.

But now to come to particulars.  Emeri, Superintendent of the Finances, and in my opinion the most corrupt man of the age, multiplied edicts as fast as he could find names to call them by.  I cannot give you a better idea of the man than by repeating what I heard him say in full Council,—­that faith was for tradesmen only, and that the Masters of Requests who urged faith to be observed in the King’s affairs deserved to be punished.  This man, who had in his youth been condemned to be hanged at Lyons, absolutely governed Mazarin in all the domestic affairs of the kingdom.  I mention this, among many other instances which I could produce of the same nature, to let you see that a nation does not feel the extremity of misery till its governors have lost all shame, because that is the instant when the subjects throw off all respect and awake convulsively out of their lethargy.