and called it severe; but others,
more wise, praised the justice of the King, _who preferred the good of
the State to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency._"

Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of
Epernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort
than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the
Regency,--him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of La Valette
disobeyed orders in the army, and he was executed as a common soldier
would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see
if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel
army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain
Court nobles,--pets of the King,--Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new
plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the
Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his
agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood.

But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris,--a court of
justice,--filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end,
tried to interpose _forms_ between the Master of France and the vermin
he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done
something. They might have insisted that petty quibbles set forth by the
lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set
forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the
time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see
this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the Court of Aids
refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the
nation braced him. Woe to the courts of a nation, when they have forced
the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice!--woe to the
councils of a nation, when they have forced the great body of plain men
to regard legislation as traffic!--woe, thrice repeated, to gentlemen of
the small pettifogger sort, when they have brought such times, and God
has brought a man to fit them!

There was now in France no man who could stand against the statesman's
purpose.

And so, having hewn, through all that anarchy and bigotry and
selfishness, a way for the people, he called them to the work. In 1626
he summoned an assembly to carry out reforms. It was essentially a
people's assembly. That anarchical States-General, domineered by great
nobles, he would not call;