RICHELIEU,
A TALE OF FRANCE.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
RICHELIEU
A TALE OF FRANCE.
The Cardinal’s malice and his potency
Together: to consider further, that
What his high hatred would effect, wants not
A minister in his power.
SHAKSPEARE.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1829.
DEDICATION.
PREFACE.
ERRATA.
CHAPTER I., CHAPTER II., CHAPTER III., CHAPTER IV., CHAPTER V., CHAPTER VI., CHAPTER VII., CHAPTER VIII., CHAPTER IX., CHAPTER X., CHAPTER XI., CHAPTER XII.
DEDICATION.
TO
My Dear Sir,
YOUR name is too great a one to be trifled with, and therefore, I do notput it at the head of this page. Should your anticipations in favour ofthis work be realized, and its success be equal to my utmost hopes, Idedicate it to you in testimony both of my gratitude for your kindness,and my admiration for your genius; but should the hand of criticism cutit short hereafter, or the frost of neglect wither it in the bud, I takea humbler tone, and beg you only to accept my thanks for your goodwishes and kind encouragement. If it should succeed, you will, I amsure, receive the work with some pleasure on my account;—if it fail,you will still accept it as the only means I have of expressing myfeeling of obligation towards you; and, at all events, you willunderstand my motive for not prefixing your name to the Dedication of abook, the fate of which is yet doubtful.
The Author.
PREFACE.
DEARLY BELOVED READER,
ALTHOUGH I call the following pages mine, and upon the strength ofthem write myself Author, yet I must in truth confess, that I have verylittle to do with them, and still less to do with the story they record;and therefore I am fain to treat the world with something of my ownexclusive composition, in the shape of a preface. The facts of the caseare as follow: I one day possessed myself of a bundle of