Mazarin's Policy.
Instead of the hesitation with which he had accosted the cardinal a quarter of an hour before, there might be read in the eyes of the young king that will against which a struggle might be maintained, and which might be crushed by its own impotence, but which, at least, would preserve, like a wound in the depth of the heart, the remembrance of its defeat.
"This time, my lord cardinal, we have to deal with something more easily found than a million."
"Do you think so, sire?" said Mazarin, looking at the king with that penetrating eye which was accustomed to read to the bottom of hearts.
"Yes, I think so; and when you know the object of my request - "
"And do you think I do not know it, sire?"
"You know what remains for me to say to you?"
"Listen, sire; these are King Charles's own words - "
"Oh, impossible!"
"Listen. 'And if that miserly, beggarly Italian,' said he - "
"My lord cardinal!"
"That is the sense, if not the words. Eh! Good heavens! I wish him no ill on that account; one is biased by his passions. He said to you: 'If that vile Italian refuses the million we ask of him, sire, - if we are forced, for want of money, to renounce diplomacy, well, then, we will ask him to grant us five hundred gentlemen.'"
The king started, for the cardinal was only mistaken in the number.
"Is not that it, sire?" cried the minister, with a triumphant accent.
"And then he added some fine words: he said, 'I have friends on the other side of the channel, and these friends only want a leader and a banner.
When they see me, when they behold the banner of France, they will rally around me, for they will comprehend that I have your support. The colors of the French uniform will be worth as much to me as the million M. de Mazarin refuses us,' - for he was pretty well assured I should refuse him that million. - 'I shall conquer with these five hundred gentlemen, sire, and all the honor will be yours.' Now, that is what he said, or to that purpose, was it not? - turning those plain words into brilliant metaphors and pompous images, for they are fine talkers in that family! The father talked even on the scaffold."
The perspiration of shame stood on the brow of Louis. He felt that it was inconsistent with his dignity to hear his brother thus insulted, but he did not yet know how to act with him to whom every one yielded, even his mother. At last he made an effort.
"But," said he, "my lord cardinal, it is not five hundred men, it is only two hundred."
"Well, but you see I guessed what he wanted."
"I never denied that you had a penetrating eye, and that was why I thought you would not refuse my brother Charles a thing so simple and so easy to grant him as what I ask of you in his name, my lord cardinal, or rather in my own."
"Sire," said Mazarin, "I have studied policy thirty years; first, under the auspices of M. le Cardinal Richelieu; and then alone. This policy has not always been over-honest, it must be allowed, but it has never been unskillful. Now that which is proposed to you majesty is dishonest and unskillful at the same time."
"Dishonest, monsieur!"
"Sire, you entered into a treaty with Cromwell."
"Yes, and in that very treaty Cromwell signed his name above mine."
"Why did you sign yours so lo down, sire? Cromwell found a good place, and he took it; that was his custom. I return, then, to M. Cromwell.
You have a treaty with him, that is to say, with England, since when you signed that treaty M. Cromwell was England."
"M. Cromwell is dead."
"Do you think so, sire?"
"No doubt he is, since his son Richard has succeeded him, and has abdicated."
"Yes, that is it exactly. Richard inherited after the death of his father, and England at the abdication of Richard. The treaty formed part of the inheritance, whether in the hands of M. Richard or in the hands of England. The treaty is, then, still as good, as valid as ever. Why should you evade it, sire? What is changed? Charles wants to-day what we were not willing to grant him ten years ago; but that was foreseen and provided against. You are the ally of England, sire, and not of Charles II. It was doubtless wrong, from a family point of view, to sign a treaty with a man who had cut off the head of the king your father's brother-in-law, and to contract an alliance with a parliament which they call yonder the Rump Parliament; it was unbecoming, I acknowledge, but it was not unskillful from a political point of view, since, thanks to that treaty, I saved your majesty, then a minor, the trouble and danger of a foreign war, which the Fronde - you remember the Fronde, sire?" - the young king hung his head - "which the Fronde might have fatally complicated. And thus I prove to your majesty that to change our plan now, without warning our allies, would be at once unskillful and dishonest. We should make war with the aggression on our side; we should make it, deserving to have it made against us; and we should have the appearance of fearing it whilst provoking it, for a permission granted to five hundred men, to two hundred men, to fifty men, to ten men, is still a permission. One Frenchman, that is the nation; one uniform, that is the army. Suppose, sire, for example, that you should have war with Holland, which, sooner or later, will certainly happen; or with Spain, which will perhaps ensue if your marriage fails" (Mazarin stole a furtive glance at the king), "and there are a thousand causes that might yet make your marriage fail, - well, would you approve of England's sending to the United Provinces or to Spain a regiment, a company, a squadron even, of English gentlemen? Would you think that they kept within the limits of their treaty of alliance?"
Louis listened; it seemed so strange to him that Mazarin should invoke good faith, and he the author of so many political tricks, called Mazarinades. "And yet," said the king, "without manifest of my authorization, I cannot prevent gentlemen of my states from passing over into England, if such should be their good pleasure."