Richelieu's dike,
they still held out manfully. The Duchess of Rohan, the Mayor Guiton,
and the minister Salbert, by noble sacrifices and burning words, kept
the will of the besieged firm as steel. They were reduced to feed on
their horses; then on bits of filthy shellfish; then on stewed leather.
They died in multitudes.

Guiton, the mayor, kept a dagger on the city council-table to stab any
man who should speak of surrender; some, who spoke of yielding, he
ordered to execution as seditious. When a friend showed him a person
dying of hunger, he said: "Does that astonish you? Both you and I must
come to that!" When another told him that multitudes were perishing he
said, "Provided one remains to hold the city gate, I ask nothing more."

But at last even Guiton had to yield. After the siege had lasted more
than a year, after five thousand were found remaining out of fifteen
thousand, after a mother had been seen to feed her child with her own
blood, the Cardinal's policy became too strong for him. The people
yielded and Richelieu entered the city as master.

And now the victorious statesman showed a greatness of soul to which all
the rest of his life was as nothing. He was a Catholic cardinal; the
Rochellois were Protestants; he was a stern ruler; they were rebellious
subjects who had long worried and almost impoverished him; all Europe,
therefore, looked for a retribution more terrible than any in history.

Richelieu allowed nothing of the sort. He destroyed the old franchises
of the city, for they were incompatible with that royal authority which
he so earnestly strove to build. But this was all. He took no vengeance;
he allowed the Protestants to worship as before; he took many of them
into the public service, and to Guiton he showed marks of respect. He
stretched forth that strong arm of his over the city and warded off all
harm. He kept back greedy soldiers from pillage; he kept back bigot
priests from persecution.

Years before this he had said, "The diversity of religions may indeed
create a division in the other world, but not in this." At another time
he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual diseases." And he
was now so tested that these expressions were found to embody not merely
an idea, but a belief. For when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though
thus owing tolerance--and even existence--to a Catholic, vexed Catholics
in a spirit most intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge
the