ardon his enemies, "I never had
any but those of the state," answered the dying man.

The cardinal's family surrounded his bed; and the attendance was
numerous. The Bishop of Lisieux, Cospdan, a man of small wits, but of
sincere devoutness, listened attentively to the firm speech, the calm
declarations, of the expiring minister. "So much self-confidence appalls
me," he said below his breath. Richelieu died as he had lived, without
scruples and without delicacies of conscience, absorbed by his great aim,
and but little concerned about the means he had employed to arrive at it.
"I believe, absolutely, all the truths taught by the church," he had said
to his confessor, and this faith sufficed for his repose. The memory of
the scaffolds he had caused to be erected did not so much as recur to his
mind. "I have loved justice, and not vengeance. I have been severe
towards some in order to be kind towards all," he had said in his will,
written in Latin. He thought just the same on his death-bed.

The king left him, not without emotion and regret. The cardinal begged
Madame d'Aiguillon, his niece, to withdraw. "She is the one whom I have
loved most," he said. Those around him were convulsed with weeping. A
Carmelite whom he had sent for turned to those present, and, "Let those,"
he said, "who cannot refrain from showing the excess of their weeping and
their lamentation leave the room; let us pray for this soul." In
presence of the majesty of death and eternity human grandeur disappears
irrevocably; the all-powerful minister was at that moment only this soul.
A last gasp announced his departure; Cardinal Richelieu was dead.

He was dead, but his work survived him. On the very evening of the 3d of
December, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal Mazarin; and next
day he wrote to the Parliaments and governors of provinces, "God having
been pleased to take to himself the Cardinal de Richelieu, I have
resolved to preserve and keep up all establishments ordained during his
ministry, to follow out all projects arranged with him for affairs abroad
and at home, in such sort that there shall not be any change. I have
continued in my councils the same persons as served me then, and I have
called thereto Cardinal Mazarin, of whose capacity and devotion to my
service I have had proof, and of whom I feel no less sure than if he had
been born amongst my subjects." Scarcely had the most powerful kings
yielded up their last b