Every time, and as many times as a single one wants to do everything himself, he wants to ruin himself; but in ruining himself he will ruin your kingdom and you, and as often as any single one wants to possess your ear and do in secret what should be resolved upon openly, it must necessarily be for the purpose of concealing from Your Majesty either his ignorance or his wickedrnpss." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t.ii.

p.

349.] Prudent rules and acute remarks, which Richelieu, when he became all-powerful, was to forget.
Eighteen months had barely rolled away when Colonel Ornano, lately created a marshal at the Duke of Anjou's request, was again arrested and carried off a prisoner "to the very room where, twenty-four years ago, Marshal Biron had been confined." For some time past "it had been current at court and throughout the kingdom that a great cabal was going on," says Richelieu in his _Memoires,_ "and the cabalists said quite openly that under his ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a dangerous enemy." If the cabalists had been living in that confidence, they were most wofully deceived.

Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but he was stern and pitiless towards the sufferings as well as the supplications of those who sought to thwart his policy.

At this period, he wished to bring about a marriage between the Duke of Anjou, then eighteen years old, and Mdlle.