FROM A PORTRAIT BY PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAGNE
“He comes towards you. You are not reassured. The personage has an air of life. But is it really a man? A spirit? Yes, certainly an intelligence, firm, clear, luminous shall I say, or of sinister brilliancy? If he made a few steps forward, we should be face to face. I have no wish for it. I fear that strong head means nothing within—no heart, no bowels. I have seen too much, in my studies of sorcery, of those evil spirits who will not remain below, but return, and once again move the world.
“What contrasts in him! So hard, so supple, so entire, so broken! By what tortures must he have been ground down, made and unmade, or let us say, désarticulé, to have become this eminently artificial thing which walks and does not walk, which advances without apparent sight or sound, as if gliding over a noiseless carpet ... then, arrived, overturns all.
“He gazes on you from the depth of his mystery, the sphinx in the red robe. I dare not say, from the depth of his knavery. For, contrary to the ancient Sphinx, who dies if divined, this man seems to say: ‘Quiconque me devine en mourra.’”
Richelieu was now a Prince of the Church, equal to the greatest in the land. One of the ends of his “sfrenata ambizione” was gained, but he still had to wait till the incapacity of the Ministers of France compelled Louis XIII., half willingly, half unwillingly, for he admired the Cardinal’s talents while he feared his dominating character, to summon him to supreme political power.
During the twenty months of waiting, Richelieu indulged the natural tastes for building and collecting which had been, no doubt, trained and encouraged by Marie de Médicis, herself so great a lover of art in its more splendid forms. At this time and a little later he bought several châteaux at no great distance from Paris—Fleury, near Fontainebleau; Bois-le-Vicomte, which he afterwards exchanged with Gaston d’Orléans for Champigny, the hereditary property of his eldest daughter, the heiress of Montpensier; Limours, which he sold, after spending large sums on beautifying it; and Rueil, near Saint-Germain. This last, when bought by the Cardinal, was merely a small country-house. He made a magnificent place of it, with moats and terraces, a beautiful park, and gardens in the Italian style which were among the most famous of the century; cascades, fountains, arches, grottos, and a population of statues. He was a great buyer of statuary, with which all his houses and gardens were largely adorned. He posed as a very considerable patron of art, but his purchases were not made without economy; the sale of various ecclesiastical charges did not bring in an unlimited fortune. Nor was his taste always faultless, even by the pseudo-classical standard of the time.
In August 1623 he wrote a long letter to his private secretary, Michel Le Masle, Prior of Les Roches—formerly his servant at the Collège de Navarre—who had been sent to Italy on confidential business connected partly with the Queen-mother’s Florentine affairs, partly with the election of a new Pope, Urban VIII. Having treated of these subjects, the Cardinal goes on to private matters of his own.
“The Sieur Franchine advises me to ask if you can send me some marble statues and a marble basin; for he says that, not being real antiques, one can have them very cheap. I particularly want a statue about three feet high, and a handsome basin a foot and a half in diameter, to put on his head. If you have this made to order the statue must hold it with both hands above his head. You will remember that, being for a fountain, the statue and the basin must be pierced.... M. d’Alincourt five or six months ago had five very cheap statues brought from Rome. You will inquire into the price of marble, the charges of sculptors, in order that we may judge, on your return, whether the work may better be done there or in France.”
M. des Roches is then directed to find out the cost of “the following statues, in bronze”: