“Leave me,” said the King, with some displeasure.

The State-Secretary slowly retired.

It was then that Louis XIII beheld himself as he really was, and was terrified at the nothingness he found in himself.  He at first stared at the mass of papers which surrounded him, passing from one to the other, finding dangers on every side, and finding them still greater with the remedies he invented.  He rose; and changing his place, he bent over, or rather threw himself upon, a geographical map of Europe.  There he found all his fears concentrated.  In the north, the south, the very centre of the kingdom, revolutions appeared to him like so many Eumenides.  In every country he thought he saw a volcano ready to burst forth.  He imagined he heard cries of distress from kings, who appealed to him for help, and the furious shouts of the populace.  He fancied he felt the territory of France trembling and crumbling beneath his feet.  His feeble and fatigued sight failed him.  His weak head was attacked by vertigo, which threw all his blood back upon his heart.

“Richelieu!” he cried, in a stifled voice, while he rang a bell; “summon the Cardinal immediately.”

And he swooned in an armchair.

When the King opened his eyes, revived by salts and potent essences which had been applied to his lips and temples, he for one instant beheld himself surrounded by pages, who withdrew as soon as he opened his eyes, and he was once more left alone with the Cardinal.  The impassible minister had had his chair placed by that of the King, as a physician would seat himself by the bedside of his patient, and fixed his sparkling and scrutinizing eyes upon the pale countenance of Louis.  As soon as his victim could hear him, he renewed his fearful discourse in a hollow voice: 

“You have recalled me.  What would you with me?”

Louis, who was reclining on the pillow, half opened his eyes, fixed them upon Richelieu, and hastily closed them again.  That bony head, armed with two flaming eyes, and terminating in a pointed and grizzly beard, the cap and vestments of the color of blood and flames,—­all appeared to him like an infernal spirit.

“You must reign,” he said, in a languid voice.

“But will you give me up Cinq-Mars and De Thou?” again urged the implacable minister, bending forward to read in the dull eyes of the Prince, as an avaricious heir follows up, even to the tomb, the last glimpses of the will of a dying relative.

“You must reign,” repeated the King, turning away his head.

“Sign then,” said Richelieu; “the contents of this are, ’This is my command—­to take them, dead or alive.’”

Louis, whose head still reclined on the raised back of the chair, suffered his hand to fall upon the fatal paper, and signed it.  “For pity’s sake, leave me; I am dying!” he said.

“That is not yet all,” continued he whom men call the great politician.  “I place no reliance on you; I must first have some guarantee and assurance.  Sign this paper, and I will leave you: