the proud Epernon to ask pardon on his
knees; drove away from the kingdom the Duke of Vendome, natural brother
of the King; executed the Duke of Montmorency, whose family traced an
unbroken lineage to Pharamond; confined Marshal Bassompierre to the
Bastile; arrested Marshal Marillac at the head of a conquering army; cut
off the head of Cinq-Mars, grand equerry and favorite of the King; and
executed on the scaffold the Counts of Chalais and Bouteville. All these
men were among the proudest and most powerful nobles in Europe; they all
lived like princes, and had princely revenues and grand offices, but had
been caught with arms in their hands, or in treasonable correspondence.
What hope for ordinary culprits when the proudest feudal nobles were
executed or exiled, like common malefactors? Neither rank nor services
could screen them from punishment. The great minister had no mercy and
no delay even for the favorites of royalty. Nay, the King himself became
his puppet, and was forced to part with his friends, his family, his
mistresses, and his pleasures. Some of the prime ministers of kings have
had as much power as Richelieu, but no minister, before or since, has
ruled the monarch himself with such an iron sway. How weak the King, or
how great the minister!

The third great force which Richelieu crushed was the parliament of
Paris. It had the privilege of registering the decrees of the King; and
hence was a check, the only check, on royal authority,--unless the King
came in person into the assembly, and enforced his decree by what was
called a "bed of justice." This body, however, was judicial rather than
legislative; made up of pedantic and aristocratic lawyers, who could be
troublesome. We get some idea of the humiliation of this assembly of
lawyers and nobles from the speech of Omer Talon,--the greatest lawyer
of the realm,--when called upon to express the sentiments of his
illustrious body to the King, at a "bed of justice": "Happy should we
be, most gracious sovereign, if we could obtain any favor worthy of the
honor which we derive from your majesty's presence; but the entry of
your sacred person into our assembly unfits us for our functions. And
inasmuch as the throne on which you are seated is a light that dazzles
us, bow, if it please you, the heavens which you inhabit, and after the
example of the Eternal Sovereign, whose image you bear, condescend to
visit us with your gracious mercy."

What a contrast to this