“He is a man of noble impulses, generous in the extreme, and the soul of honour, but he knows not how to conceal his feelings; and in these days no man, even the most powerful, can venture to rail in public against one who has offended him, when that man happens to be the cardinal.  I love my brother dearly, but I have mixed myself up in no way with his affairs.  I am an officer of the king, and as such I stand aloof from all parties in the state.  The cardinal is his minister; doubtless he has his faults, but he is the greatest man in France, and the wisest.  He lives and works for the country.  It may be true that he is ambitious for himself, but the glory of France is his chief care.  It is for that purpose that we have entered upon this war, for he sees that if Germany becomes united under an emperor who is by blood a Spaniard, France must eventually be crushed, and Spain become absolutely predominant in Europe.  If he is opposed, Richelieu strikes hard, because he deems those who oppose him as not only his own enemies but as enemies of France.

“As a prince of the church it must have been bitter for him to have to ally himself with the Protestant princes of Germany, with Protestant Holland, and Protestant England, but he has done so.  It is true that he has captured La Rochelle, and broken the power of the Huguenot lords of the south, but these new alliances show that he is ready to sacrifice his own prejudices for the good of France when France is endangered, and that it is on account of the danger of civil broils to the country, rather than from a hatred of the Huguenots, that he warred against them.  Here am I, whom he deigns to honour with his patronage, a Huguenot; my brother, Bouillon, was also a Huguenot, and strangely enough the quarrel between him and the cardinal did not break out until my brother had changed his religion.

“He was more rigorously brought up than I was, and was taught to look upon the Catholics with abhorrence; but he married, not from policy but from love, a Catholic lady, who is in all respects worthy of him, for she is as high spirited and as generous as he is, and at the same time is gentle, loving, and patient.  Though deeply pious, she is free from bigotry, and it was because my brother came to see that the tales he had been taught of the bigotry and superstition of the Catholics were untrue, at least in many instances, that he revolted against the intolerance of the doctrines in which he had been brought up, renounced them, and became an adherent of his wife’s religion.

“Nigh four years ago the Duke of Soissons, a prince of the blood, incurred the enmity of Richelieu by refusing, with scorn, his proposal that he should marry the Countess of Cobalet, Richelieu’s niece.  The refusal, and still more the language in which he refused, excited the deep enmity of the cardinal.  Soissons had joined the party against him, but as usual Richelieu had the king’s ear.  Soissons