This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By ALFRED DE VIGNY
"Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies,
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought,"
exclaims the immortal Shakespeare in the chorus of one of his tragedies.
"Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. . . . . . . . . . behold, And follow."
With this poetic movement he traverses time and space, and transports atwill the attentive assembly to the theatre of his sublime scenes.
We shall avail ourselves of the same privilege, though without the samegenius. No more than he shall we seat ourselves upon the tripod of theunities, but merely casting our eyes upon Paris and the old dark palaceof the Louvre, we will at once pass over the space of two hundred leaguesand the period of two years.
Two years! what changes may they not have upon men, upon their families,and, above all, in that great and so troublous family of nations, whoselong alliances a single day suffices to destroy, whose wars are ended bya birth, whose peace is broken by a death! We ourselves have beheldkings returning to their dwelling on a spring day; that same day a vesselsailed for a voyage of two years. The navigator returned. The kingswere seated upon their thrones; nothing seemed to have taken place in hisabsence, and yet God had deprived those kings of a hundred days of theirreign.
But nothing was changed for France in 1642, the epoch to which we turn,except her fears and her hopes. The future alone had changed its aspect.Before again beholding our personages, we must contemplate at large thestate of the kingdom.
The powerful unity of the monarchy was rendered still more imposing bythe misfortunes of the neighboring States. The revolutions in England,and those in Spain and Portugal, rendered the peace which France enjoyedstill more admired. Strafford and Olivares, overthrown or defeated,aggrandized the immovable Richelieu.
Six formidable armies, reposing upon their triumphant weapons, served asa rampart to the kingdom. Those of the north, in league with Sweden, hadput the Imperialists to flight, still pursued by the spirit of GustavusAdolphus, those on the frontiers of Italy had in Piedmont received thekeys of the towns which had been defended by Prince Thomas; and thosewhich strengthened the chain of the Pyrenees held in check revoltedCatalonia, and chafed before Perpignan, which they were not allowed totake. The interior was not happy, but tranquil. An invisible geniusseemed to have maintained this calm, for the King, mortally sick,languished at St. Germain with a young favorite; and the Cardinal was,they said, dying at Narbonne. Some deaths, however, betrayed that he yetlived; and at intervals, men falling as if struck by a poisonous blastrecalled to mind the invisible power.
St.-Preuil, one of Richelieu's enemies, had just laid his "iron head"upon the scaffold without sham