Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
Shelley, “Queen Mab.”
[16]. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV.—Tr.
[17]. The Comte de Saint-Priest, in an excellent article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, has rightly shown that the party crushed by Cardinal Richelieu had nothing in common with feudalism or the great aristocratic methods of government. Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and Marillac tried to overthrow the State merely in order to obtain favour and office for themselves. The great Cardinal was quite innocent of the “murder of the French nobility,” with which he has been so often reproached.
[18]. A. von Humboldt, Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent, vol. ii, pp. 129–30.
[19]. See the articles of Gustave d’Alaux in the Revue des deux Mondes.