"Inasmuch as it hath pleased God," he says in his will, "to bless my labors, and make them considered by the king, my kind master, showing recognition of them by his royal munificence, beyond what I could hope for, I have esteemed it a duty to bind my heirs to preserve the estate in my family, in such sort that it may maintain itself for a long while in the dignity and splendor which it hath pleased the king to confer upon it, in order that posterity may know that, as I served him faithfully, he, by virtue of a complete kingliness, knew what love to show me, and how to load me with his benefits." The cardinal had taken pleasure in embellishing the estate of Richelieu, in Touraine, where he was born, and which the king had raised to a duchy-peerage.

Mdlle.

de Montpensier, in her _Memoires,_ gives an account of a visit she paid to it in her youth.

"I passed," she says, "along a very fine street of the town, all the houses of which are in the best style of building, one like another, and quite newly made, which is not to be wondered at.

MM.