The most zealous amongst us pray God that the sea may swallow up his person as it has swallowed his goods.

As for me, I am not of that number, for I belong to those who offer incense to the powers that be." It was as yet a time when the religious fatherland was dearer than the political; the French Huguenots naturally appealed for aid to all Protestant nations.

It was even now an advance in national ideas to call the English who had come to the aid of La Rochelle foreigners.
Toiras, meanwhile, still held out in the Fort of St.Martin, and Buckingham was beginning to "abate somewhat of the absolute confidence he had felt about making himself master of it, having been so ill-advised as to write to the king his master that he would answer for it." The proof of this was that a burgess of La Rochelle, named Laleu, went to see the king with authority from the Duke of Angouleme, who commanded the army in his Majesty's absence, and that "he proposed that the English should retire, provided that the king would have Fort Louis dismantled.

The Duke of Angouleme was inclined to accept this proposal, but the cardinal forcibly represented all the reasons against it: "It will be said, perhaps, that if the Island of Re be lost, it will be very difficult to recover it;" this he allowed, but he put forward, to counterbalance this consideration, another, that, if honor were lost, it would never be recovered, and that, if the Island of Re were lost, he considered that his Majesty was bound to stick to the blockade of Rochelle, and that he might do so with success.

Upon this, his Majesty resolved to push the siege of Rochelle vigorously, and to give the command to Mylord his brother; "but Monsieur was tardy as usual, not wanting to serve under the king when the health of his Majesty might permit him to return to his army, so that the cardinal wrote to President Le Coigneux, one of the favorite counsellors of the Duke of Orleans, to say that if imaginary hydras of that sort were often taking shape in the mind of Monsieur, he had nothing more to say than that there would be neither pleasure nor profit in being mixed up with his affairs.