DEATH OF RICHELIEU.

Richelieu in the meantime had reached his palace in the capital.
Roman despot was never more courted nor more feared; but death was
coming fast to close his triumphant career. A mortal malady wasted him:
yet the cardinal abated nothing of his pride, nor of his vindictiveness.
He exiled some of the king's personal and cherished officers; he
insulted Anne of Austria, the queen: remained seated during a visit that
she paid him, and threatened to separate her from her children. Even his
guards no longer lowered their arms in the presence of the monarch. His
demeanor to Louis XIII. was that of one potentate to another. In
December of 1642 the malady of the cardinal became inveterate, and every
hope of life was denied him. He summoned the king to his dying bed,
recapitulated the great and successful acts of his administration, and
recommended Mazarin as the person to continue its spirit, and to be his
successor. Louis promised obsequiousness. Richelieu then received the
last consolations of religion, and went through these pious and touching
ceremonies with an apparently firm and undisturbed conscience. The man
of blood knew no remorse. His acts had all been, he asserted, for his
country's good; and the same unbending pride and unshaken confidence
that had commanded the respect of men, seemed to accompany him into the
presence of his Maker. He died like a hero of the Stoics, though clad in
the trappings of a prince of the church. Most of those present were
edified by his firmness; but one bishop, calling to mind the life, the
arrogance, and the crimes of the minister, observed, that "the
confidence of the dying Richelieu filled him with terror." The crime of
having trodden out the last spark of his country's liberties, and of
having converted its monarchic government into pure despotism, is that
for which Richelieu is most generally condemned. But the state of
anarchy which he removed was license, not liberty. The task of