"He was a mediocre and timid creature," he said, "faithless, ungenerous, too weak to remain steady against the assault of so great a fortune as that which ruined him incontinently; allowing himself to be borne away by it as by a torrent, without any foothold, unable to set bounds to his ambition, incapable of arresting it, and not knowing what he was about, like a man on the top of a tower, whose head goes round and who has no longer any power of discernment.

He would fain have been Prince of Orange, Count of Avignon, Duke of Albret, King of Austrasia, and would not have refused more if he had seen his way to it." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ p.

169, in the _Petitot Collection,_ Series v., t.

xxii.] This brilliant and truthful portrait lacks one feature which was the merit of the Constable de Luynes: he saw coming, and he anticipated, a long way off and to little purpose, but heartily enough, the government of France by a supreme kingship, whilst paying respect, as long as he lived, to religious liberty, and showing himself favorable to intellectual and literary liberty, though he was opposed to political and national liberty.

That was the government which, after him, was practised with a high hand and rendered triumphant by Cardinal Richelieu to the honor, if not the happiness, of France..