Louis XIII.

awaited him at Compiegne.

The chancellor was accompanied by a numerous following, worthy of the man who held the command of a sovereign over the princes of the Protestant League; he had at his side the famous Hugo Grotius, but lately exiled from his country on account of religious disputes, and now accredited as ambassador to the King of France from the little queen, Christina of Sweden.

It was Grotius who acted as interpreter between the king and the chancellor of Sweden.

A rare and grand spectacle was this interview between, on the one side, the Swede and the Hollander, both of them great political philosophers in theory or practice, and, on the other, the all-powerful minister of the King of France, in presence of that king himself.