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The Count Duke, gentlemen," pursued he, with the wind still in

his favour, and much wondering at not meeting with opposition,

"the Count Duke is an old fox-speaking with due respect-who would

make any one lose his track: when he appears to go to the right,

it would be safest to follow him to the left: no one can boast of

knowing his designs; they who are to execute them, they who write

the despatches, know nothing of them. I speak from authority, for

the keeper of the castle deigns to confide in me. The Count Duke

knows well enough how the pot boils in all the courts in Europe;

and these politicians have hardly laid a plan, but he begins to

frustrate it. That poor man, the Cardinal Richelieu, attempts and

dissembles, toils and strives; and what does it all produce? When

he has dug the mine, he finds a countermine already prepared by

the Count Duke--"