Cardinal de la Vallette on the instant seized the arm of the King's mantle, and kissed it with all the ardor of a lover, and the young Mazarin did much the same with Richelieu himself, assuming with admirable Italian suppleness an expression radiant with joyful emotion. Two streams of flatterers hastened, one toward the King, the other toward the minister; the former group, not less adroit than the second, altho less direct, addrest to the prince thanks which could be heard by the minister, and burned at the feet of the one incense which was destined for the other. As for Richelieu, bestowing a bow on the right and a smile on the left, he stept forward, and stood on the right hand of the King, as his natural place.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] From "Cinq-Mars; or the Conspiracy Under Louis XIII." Translated by William C. Hazlitt. The Marquis de Cinq-Mars was a favorite of Louis XIII, grand-master of the wardrobe and the horse, and aspired to a seat in the royal council and to the hand of Maria de Gonzaga, Princess of Mantua. Having been refused by Richelieu a place in the council, he formed a conspiracy against the cardinal and entered into a treasonable correspondence with Spain. The conspiracy being discovered, he was beheaded at Lyons in 1642. Bulwer's popular play "Richelieu," tho founded on this episode, diverges radically in several details.
VICTOR HUGO
Born in 1802, died in 1885; his childhood spent partly in Corsica, Italy and Spain, his father an officer in Napoleon's army; educated at home by a priest and at a school in Paris; published in 1816 his first tragedy, "Irtamème," followed by other plays and poems; his most notable work down to 1859 being "La Legende"; his writings extremely numerous, other titles being "L'Art d'être Grand-Père" 1877, "Notre Dame de Paris" 1831, "Napoleon le Petit" 1852, "Les Misérables" 1862, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" 1866, "L'Homme Qui Rit" 1869, "Quatrevingt-treize" 1874, "History of a Crime" 1877; elected to the French Academy in 1841; exiled from France in 1851, living first in Belgium, then in Jersey and Guernsey; returned to France after the fall of the Empire in 1870; elected a life member of the Senate in 1876.
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO[57]
The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war.