power and royal state he debased and swallowed up the personal majesty of
the King. He distinguished more judiciously than any man in the world
between bad and worse, good and better, which is a great qualification in
a minister. He was too apt to be impatient at mere trifles when they had
relation to things of moment; but those blemishes, owing to his lofty
spirit, were always accompanied with the necessary talent of knowledge to
make amends for those imperfections. He had religion enough for this
world. His own good sense, or else his inclination, always led him to
the practice of virtue if his self-interest did not bias him to evil,
which, whenever he committed it, he did so knowingly. He extended his
concern for the State no further than his own life, though no minister
ever did more than he to make the world believe he had the same regard
for the future. In a word, all his vices were such that they received a
lustre from his great fortune, because they were such as could have no
other instruments to work with but great virtues. You will easily
conceive that a man who possessed such excellent qualities, and appeared
to have as many more,--which he had not,--found it no hard task to
preserve that respect among mankind which freed him from contempt, though
not from hatred.

Cardinal Mazarin's character was the reverse of the former; his birth was
mean, and his youth scandalous. He was thrashed by one Moretto, a
goldsmith of Rome, as he was going out of the amphitheatre, for having
played the sharper. He was a captain in a foot regiment, and Bagni, his
general, told me that while he was under his command, which was but three
months, he was only looked upon as a cheat. By the interest of Cardinal
Antonio Barberini, he was sent as Nuncio Extraordinary to France, which
office was not obtained in those days by fair means. He so tickled
Chavigni by his loose Italian stories that he was shortly after
introduced to Cardinal de Richelieu, who made him Cardinal with the same