"Not so decidedly," answered the Count, "but that it can be sheathed again; and if this cardinal, alarmed at these preparations, as I know he is, will but yield such terms of compromise as may insure my own safety and that of my companions, permit the thousands of exiles who are longing for their native country to return, and secure the freedom and the peace of France, far, far be it from me ever to shed one drop of Gallic blood."
"But does not your highness still continue your preparations, then?" demanded I.
"Most assuredly," replied the Count. "The matter must come to a conclusion speedily, either by a negotiation and treaty, which will insure us our demands, or by force of arms; and therefore it is well to be prepared for the latter, though most willing to embrace the former alternative."
"And does the minister seem inclined to treat?" asked I.
"He always pretends that he is so," replied Monsieur de Soissons. "But who can judge of what his inclinations are by what he says? his whole life is a vizard--as hollow--as false--as unlike the real face of the man. We all know how negotiations can be protracted; and he has used every means to keep this in suspense till he could free himself from other embarrassments. He asked our demands, and then misunderstood them; and then required a fuller interpretation of particular parts; and then mistook the explanation--then let a month or two slip by; and then again required to know our demands, as if he had never heard them; and then began over again the same endless train of irritating delay. But, however, there is one of our demands which we will never relinquish, and which he will never grant, except he be compelled, which is the solemn condemnation and relinquishment of all special commissions."
"I am not very well aware of the meaning of that term," said I: "may I crave your highness to explain it to me?"
"I do not wonder at your not knowing it," answered the Count: "it is an iniquity of his own invention, totally unknown to the laws of France. When any one was accused of a crime formerly, the established authorities of the part of the country in which it was averred to have been committed took cognisance of the matter, and the accused was tried before the usual judges; but now, on the contrary, on any such accusation, this cardinal issues his special commission to various judges named by himself, uniformly his most devoted creatures, and often the personal enemies of the accused. Under such an abuse, who can escape? False accusers can always be procured; and where the judges are baser still, justice is out of the question. The law of France is no longer administered, but the personal resentments of Richelieu."
The conversation continued for some time in the same course, and turned but little to the advantage of the minister. The Count de Soissons had real and serious cause of indignation against Richelieu, on his own account; and this made him see all the public crimes of that great but cruel and vindictive minister in the most unfavourable light. The stimulus of neglect had, in my mind, also excited feelings which made me lend an attentive ear to the grievances and wrongs that the prince was not slow in urging, and my blood rose warmly against the tyranny which had driven so many of the great and noble from their country, and spilt the most generous blood in France upon the scaffold.
I have through life seen self-interest and private pique bias the judgment of the wisest and the best intentioned; and I never yet in all the wide world met with a man who, in judging of circumstances wherein he himself was any way involved, did not suffer himself to be prejudiced by one personal feeling or another. The most despotic lords of their own passions have always some favourite that governs them themselves. Far be it from me, then, to say, I was not very willing and easy to be convinced that the man who had neglected me had also abused his power, tyrannized over his fellow-subjects, and wronged both his king and his country. I was in the heat of youth, soon prepossessed, and already prejudiced; and whatever I might think afterwards, I, at the moment, looked upon the enterprise which was contemplated by Monsieur le Comte as one of the most noble and justifiable that had ever been undertaken to free one's native country from a tyrant.
There was also in the manners of the Count de Soissons that inexpressible charm which leaves the judgment hardly free. It is impossible to say exactly in what it consisted. I have seen many men with the same princely air and demeanour, and with the same suavity of manner, who did not in the least possess that sort of fascination which, like the cestus of the goddess, won all hearts for him that was endowed with it. I was not the only one that felt the charm. Everybody that surrounded the prince--everybody that, in any degree, came in contact with him, were all affected alike towards him. Even the common multitude experienced the same; and the shouts with which the populace of Paris greeted his appearance on some day of ceremony, are said to have been the first cause of the Cardinal's jealous persecution of him. One saw a fine and noble spirit, a generous and feeling heart shining through manners that were at once dignified while they were affable, and warm though polished; and it might be the conviction of his internal rectitude, and his perfect sincerity, which added the master-spell to a demeanour eminently graceful. Whatever it was, the fascination on my mind was complete; and I hardly know what I would have refused to undertake in the service of such a prince. At the end of our conversation, scarcely knowing that I did so, I could not help comparing in my own mind my present interview with the Count de Soissons, and that which I had formerly had with the Cardinal de Richelieu; and how strange was the difference of my feelings at the end of each! I left the minister, cold, dissatisfied, dispirited; and I quitted the Count de Soissons with every hope and every wish ardent in his favour; with all my best feelings devoted to his service, and my own expectations of the future raised and expanded by my communion with him, like a flower blown fully out by the influence of a genial day of summer.