It were but charity to take my sin
On such broad shoulders. Exercise is healthful.”
His interview with De Mauprat reminded one of a cat playing with a mouse, or of a royal tiger which had laid its paw on one of the sacred cattle and was watching its quiverings under the velvet-sheathed claws. When De Mauprat expects to be ordered to the block, Richelieu sends him to his darling Julie:
“To the tapestry chamber. You will there behold
The executioner: your doom be private,
And heaven have mercy on you!”
The delightful humor here follows the desperate terror like sunlight streaming on a thunder-cloud. What a contrast was furnished in the allusion to the detested Baradas and his confederates when the aroused cardinal, after the failure of every method to conciliate, towers into his kingliest port, and exclaims, with concentrated and vindictive resolution,—
“All means to crush. As with the opening and
The clenching of this little hand, I will
Crush the small vermin of the stinging courtiers!”