followed his enemy before very long in consequence of an
attack of apoplexy.

In singular contrast to Bassompierre's work are the memoirs of another
chronicler of the same time, Francois Annibal, Marechal d'Estrees,
brother of the mistress of Henri IV. D'Estrees excludes all gossip,
confines himself strictly to matters of public business, and recounts
them apparently with scrupulous accuracy, and in a plain but clear and
sufficient style. Among the most curious and not the least interesting
of the works of this class are the memoirs of Pontis--one of the famous
solitaries of Port Royal in his old age. Pontis died at the age of
eighty-seven, and had been for fifty-six years in the army. His memoirs,
which are strictly confined to his personal experiences, obtained the
approbation of two such undeniably competent judges as Conde and Madame
de Sevigne, and are by no means unworthy of the honour. The actual
composition of the memoirs is said to be the work of Thomas du Fosse.
The memoirs called Richelieu's are different from all these, and,
notwithstanding their great extent and the illustrious name they bear,
of very inferior interest, at least from the literary point of view.
Richelieu's talents, it is sufficiently notorious, were not literary;
and even if they had been, but little of these memoirs comes from his
own hand. They are the work of secretaries, confidants, and
under-strappers of all sorts, writing at most from the cardinal's
dictation, and probably in many cases merely constructing _precis_ of
documents. There is, therefore, no need to dwell on them.

In the memoirs of Arnauld d'Andilly and of his son, the Abbe Arnauld,
the personal interest and the abundance of anecdote and
character-drawing which characterise the memoir work of the time
reappear; the latter are, indeed, particularly full of them. Those of
the father are chiefly interesting, as exhibiting the curious mixture of
worldly and spiritual motives which played so large a part in the
history of the time. For Arnauld who was the fervent friend and disciple
of Saint Cyran, the practical founder of Jansenism in France, was also
an assiduous courtier of Gaston d'Orleans, and not too well satisfied
with the results of his courtiership. There are memoirs attributed to
Gaston himself, but they are almost certainly the work of another hand;
their historical value is not inconsiderable, but they have little
literary interest. Those of Marie, Duchess de Nemou