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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A78009	Letters of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English. Now collected into one volume, with a methodicall table of all the letters. 1. 2. 3. and 4th parts. By Sr Richard Baker Knight, and others.; Correspondence. English	Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez, seigneur de, 1595-1654.	1654 (1654)	Wing B614; Thomason E1444_1; ESTC R209109	450,799	529

speake seriously they are no lesse necessary among excellent discourses and conceits then discipline amongst Souldiers without which courage is of no effect and valour most commonly proveth unprofitable As for me who have known the Authour from both our infancies and who better then all others can depose in what fashion he effecteth his labours besides knowing the great advantage he hath over all those who write at this day I haue ever thought that if any were able to raise our Language to the merit and reputation of such Eloquence werewith the Ancients were adorned it should be to him alone to whom our age oweth this glory Nor do I doubt but the comparison coming in question at this present between these his writings and those of others the difference will be easily discovered assuring my self that all spirits will dispose themselves to be ranged herein to mine opinion and voluntarily to give way thereunto As for my self who read the Ancients with all respect due unto them and the Moderns without any prejudicate opinion do notwithstanding confesse that all I can conceive in others is so far short of the merit of these Letters that abstracting from the passion I am possessed with both for them and their Authour hardly could I dispose my self to frame this Preface for them And who is there will make any difficulty to give them their due Since he whose very faults have been esteemed so fair that they caused a Sect during his life which yet continues after his death having at Meats seen certain discourses this Authour composed in those miserable times and which stood in need of another age to be gratefully regarded was astonished at his beginnings confessing it was with unwillingnesse that the onely thing he supposed to possesse by the generall consent of all was ravished from him by one who as yet had lived but twenty yeares But surely it was in this strain of writing which in that it is not restrained within so strict limits as that of Letters is capable of all the motions and ornaments of Art and of the same sort as was the other discourse he addresseth to the Pope who now is upon the like subject as that of Saint Bernards to Eugenius And as God never chose among men any so accomplished with all perfections as this person to command all others so can I not conceive any thing either more great or extraordinary then what appeareth in this work nor more sutable to the excellency of the subject and to the Majesty of him to whom he dedicated his discourse But if to return to the particulars of these letters it were necessary for the delivering an unpartiall judgement to consider those of the Antients I should seem more respectfull then were requisite if puting them all together I should undertake to make them so much as enter into comparison with these excepting onely those of Seneca yea even in those which in truth come not near these there is so infinite abundance of matter as can hardly be imagined and since all things therein appear so confusedly that it seems they were therein couched without choice and to say truth as it were at adventure some who will yet further tax his stile will happily say they are rather matters then Works But for my part if there be any defects therein I hold they ought well to be borne with in regard of so many rarities therein concurring and when we have said all what appearance is there to undervalue any thing we receive from a man who was worth seven Millions of Gold and who once in his life had the heart and ambition to aspire to the Empire of the whole world Let us therefore esteem all we receive from him and from those times yet suffer us to commend our own wherein this science which meddleth with the commanding of spirits and which was but formerly in it's infancy is now found to be in his full maturity and as it were of ripe years If therefore you acknowledge any obligation due as in truth there is to these excellent Letters you shall in short time see so solid and just a judgement proceed from this Authour that the Parliament it self produced not any more able and his solitarinesse will be so satisfactory unto you that you will make no more difference then I do to prefer the same before the magnificence of Princely Courts and the Pomp of most stateliest Cities A Table of the letters as they lie in order which are contained in the first volume Lib. I. A Letter from Cardinall of Richelieu to the Signeur of Balzac Page 1. To the Lord Cardinall of Richelieu Page 2 To the same Page 4 To the same Page 5 To the same Page 6 To the same Page 8 To the same Page 9 To the Lord Bishop of Air Page 11 To the same Page 14 To the same Page 16 To the same Page 17 To the same Page 20 To the same Page 21 To the reverend Bishop of Air Page 22 To Mounsieur de la Motts Aigron Page 26 To Mounsieur de bois Robert Page 29 Lib. 2. in the first vol. To my Lord Cardinall de la Valete Page 32 To the same Page 35 To the same Page 36 To the same Page 37 To the same Page 39 To the same Page 42 To the same Page 43 To the same Page 44 To the same Page 46 To the same Page 47 To the same Page 49 To Mounsieur du Planty Page 50 To Mounsieur de la Magdelen Page 51 To Mounsieur de Montigny Page 52 To the Duke of Espernon Page 53 To the same Page 55 To the same Page 56 The Duke of Espernon his letter to the French King penned by Balzac Page 59 To the same Page 61 To the same Page 63 Lib. 3. in the first vol. To the Duke de la valete Page 65 To the Signeur of Plessis governour of Tollemount Page 67 To Hidasp Page 68 To Hidasp Page 72 To Signeur de la Roche Page 74 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 75 To the same Page 76 To the same Page 79 To the same Page 80 To the same Page 82 To Mounsieur Girard Secretary to the Duke of Espernon Page 85 To the same Page 86 To Philander Page 87 To the same Page 87 To Olympia Page 89 To Chrisolita Page 90 To Clorinda Page 91 To the same Page 92 To the same Page 93 To the same Page 94 To the same Page 95 To Lidia Page 96 To the Baron of Amblovile Page 97 To the Count of Schomberg Page 99 A letter from the Count of Schomberg to Mounsieur de Balzac Page 100 Lib. 4. in the fifth vol. To my lord Marshal of Schomberg Page 101 To the Bishop of Angoulesme Page 103 To Father Garasso Page 104 To the Cardinall of Valete Page 106 Another Page 107 To the Lord Bishop of Nantes Page 109 To Mounsieur de la Marque Page 110 To Mounsieur Tissandler Page 111 To Mounsieur de

Faret Page 112 To Mounsieur Coeffetean Bishop of Marseillis Page 113 To Mounsieur Pouzet Page 114 An answer to a letter sent to Balzac from a learned old Lady Madamoiselle de Gourney Page 114 To Mounsieur Berniere Page 117 To Mounsieur de Voiture Page 117 To Mounsieur de Vaugelas Page 118 To Mounsieur de Racan Page 120 To the Abbot of S. Cyran Page 121 To Mounsieur Malherb Page 126 To Mounsieur de Vaugelas Page 127 To the same Page 128 To the same Page 129 To the same Page 130 To the same Page 131 To Hydasp Page 132 Another Page 135 Another Page 136 Another Page 137 Another Page 138 Another Page 139 Another Page 141 A Table of the letters contained in the second volume Lib. I. TO Mounsieur Moreau Page I. To Mounsieur R●gault Page 3 To Mounsieur da Moulin Page 5 To Mounsieur the Abbot of Baume Page 8 To Mounsieur Bouthilier Page 10 To Mounsieur the Earle of Exceter Page 11 To Mounsieur de Boyssat Page 12 To Mounsieur Huggens Page 14 To the Baron of S. Surin Page 16 To Cardinall de la Valette Page 17 Another Page 18 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 19 To Mounsieur de Soubran Page 22 To Mounsieur de la Nauue Page 24 To Mounsieur Chaplain Page 25 To Mounsieur de Nesmond Page 26 To Mounsieur de Pontac Monpleisir Page 28 To Mounsieur Huggens Page 30 To Mounsieur de la Nauue Page 32 To Mounsieur Conrage Page 33 To Page 35 To Mounsieur Godeau Page 37 To Mounsieur de Thibaudiere Page 38 To Mounsieur Gyrard Page 39 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes Page 43 Another Page 44 Another Page 45 To Page 46 To Mounsieur du Pleix Page 47 To Mounsieur Maynard Page 48 To Mounsieur de Descourades Page 49 To Mounsieur d' Andilly Page 50 To Mounsieur Conrart Page 52 To the same another Page 53 To my Lord the Mareschall Defiat Page 56 To Mounsieur Grainer Page 57 To Mounsieur Gaillard Page 58 To Mounsieur the Master Advocate in the Parliament Page 58 Lib. 2. in the second vol. To my Lord the Earle of Exceter Page 61 To my Lord the Arch Bishop of Thoulouse Page 62 To Mounsieur Arnaut Abbot of S. Nicholas Page 65 To Mounsieur Ogier Page 67 To Mounsieur Sirmond Page 69 To Mounsieur Collombiers Page 70 To Page 71 To Mounsieur Coeffeteau Page 72 To my Lord the Earle of Brassac Page 74 To Mounsieur de la Nauve Page 76 To Mounsieur Heinsius Page 77 To Mounsieur de la Pigionniere Page 79 To Mounsieur Chaplain Page 79 To Mounsieur Maynard Page 81 To Page 81 To Mounsieur Arnaut Page 82 To Mounsieur Nesmond Page 83 To Mounsieur de Borstell Page 85 Another Page 86 Another Page 86 Another Page 87 Another Page 88 Another Page 89 Another Page 89 Another Page 90 Another Page 91 Another Page 92 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 93 To Mounsieur Descartes Page 94 To Mounsieur de la Motte Aigron Page 95 To Mounsieur de Grainer Page 96 To Mounsieur de la Nauve Page 97 Another Page 98 Another Page 99 Another Page 100 To Mounsieur Bardyn Page 101 To Mounsieur de Aiguebere Page 103 Another Page 105 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 106 Another Page 107 Another Page 108 To Mounsieur the master Advocate in the Parliament Page 110 Another Page 112 Another Page 112 To Mounsieur de Caupeau ville Page 113 To Page 114 To Mounsieur Trovillier Page 115 To Mounsieur Gerard Page 116 To my Lord the Bishop of Nants Page 118 Another Page 118 A Table of all the letters in the third volume lib. 1. TO my Lord the Cardinall de la Valet page I. To the same page 2 To Mounsieur Godea page 2 3 To Mounsieur Conrart page 4 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes page 5 Another page 6 To Mounsieur de la Nauve page 7 To Mounsieur de la Motte le Voyer page 8 To Madam de Villesavin page 9 To Mounsieur de Gomberville page 10 To Mounsieur de Villiers Hottoman page 12 To Mounsieur de Borstell page 13 To Madam page 15 To Mounsieur Hobbier page 17 To Mounsieur de Copiauville page 18 To Mounsieur de Forgues page 19 To Madam d'Anguitur page 20 To Mounsieur Balthazar page 22 To Mounsieur de Serizai page 23 Another page 24 Another page 25 To Mounsieur Ogier page 26 Another page 27 To Madam Desloges page 28 Another page 29 To page 30 To Madam Desloges page 31 Another page 32 Another page 35 Another page 36 Another page 37 Another page 38 To Mounsieur de la Nouve page 39 To Madam Desloges page 40 Another page 41 Another page 42 Another page 43 Another page 44 Another page 45 Another page 46 Another page 47 Another page 48 Another page 49 Another page 50 To page 51 To page 52 To page 53 To Mounsieur de Coignet page 54 To Mounsieur de Nuluic page 55 To Madam Desloges page 56 Another page 58 To Madam du Fos page 59 To Madam de Campagnole page 61 Another page 62 Another page 63 Another page 64 The second part of the third volume To my Lord the Cardinall Duke of Richelieu page 69 Another page 74 Another page 75 To Mounsieur Cytois page 77 To Mounsieur de Chastelet page 78 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert page 81 To Mounsieur Favereau page 83 Another page 86 To Mounsieur Girard page 87 To my Lord the Earle of Port page 88 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes page 89 To Mounsieur Senne page 90 The opinion of Cicero concerning the stile which Philosophers use in their writings page 92 To Mounsieur Granier page 92 To Mounsieur de Brye page 93 To Mounsieur de Silhon page 94 To Mounsieur de S. Marte page 99 To Mounsieur D'Argenton page 100 To the most Reverend Father Leon page 101 To Mounsieur Chaplain page 102 To Mounsieur Bonnaud page 105 To Mounsieur Souchote page 106 To Mounsieur Tissander page 106 The letter of Peter Bembo to Hercules Strotius page 108 Another page 108 Another page 109 To the Duke of Falete page 110 To the Bishop of Poitiers page 112 To Mounsieur Guyet page 113 To Mounsieur de L'orme page 114 To my Lord page 115 To Mounsieur Senne page 115 To Mounsieur de Piles Cleremont page 116 To Mounsieur de Voiture page 117 Another page 118 To Mounsieur Mestivier page 119 To Mounsieur de Mesmes D'Auvur page 120 To Mounsieur de Thure page 121 To Mounsieur de Vougelas page 122 To Mounsieur Girard page 123 Another page 125 Clarissimo Balzacio Facultas Theologiae Pariensiensis S. page 126 Another page 127 To Mounsieur Talon page 128 Another page 129 To Mounsieur D'Espernon page 130 To Mounsieur Rous sines page 131 To Mounsieur Breton page 133 Another page 134 Another page 136 To

Mounsieur Gerard page 137 To Mounsieur de Gues page 139 To Mouns de Bois Robert page 143 A Table of the Letters contained in the fourth volume TO Mouns Conrart page I. To Mounsieur du Moulin page 3 To Mouns L'Huillier page 4 To Mounsieur the Abbot of Bois Robert page 6 To my Lord the Earle of Exceter page 7 To my Lord the Duke de la Valett page 8 To Mouns Drovet page 9 To Mouns De-Bonair page 10 To Mouns Huggens page 11 To Mouns de Racan page 12 To Mouns De St. Chartres page 13 To Mouns Baudoin page 14 To Mouns de Coignet page 15 To Madam Cesloges page 16 To my Lord Keeper of the Seals Seguier page 17 To Mounsieur de Morins page 18 To Mouns de Vaugulas page 19 To Mouns de la Motte Aigron page 21 To Mouns de Borstel page 22 To Mouns the chief Advocate page 23 To Mounsieur de Maury page 24 To Mouns de Mondory page 24 To Mounsieur le Guay page 26 To Mouns de Silhon page 26 To Mouns de la Fosse page 27 To Mouns D'Espesses page 29 To the same page 30 To Mouns de Couurelles page 32 To page 32 To my Lord the Bishop of Angoulesme page 33 To Mounsieur de page 34 To Mounsieur de Serizay page 39 To Mouns Habert Abbot of Cerizy page 40 To Mouns de Galliard page 41 To the same page 42 To Madam Desloges page 43 To Mouns de page 44 To Mouns Girard page 46 To the same page 47 To the same page 48 To the same page 49 To Madamoisel de Campagnole page 50 To Mouns the Abbot of Bois Robert page 51 To the same page 52 To the same page 53 To Mouns de Savignac page 54 To Mouns Chaplain page 56 To the same page 57 To the same page 58 To the same page 59 To the same page 60 To the same page 62 To the same page 63 To the same page 64 To the same page 65 To the same page 66 To Mounsieur de Silhon page 67 To Mouns Gerard Secretary to the Duke of Espernon page 68 To the same page 69 To Mouns de la Mothe le Vayer page 70 To Mouns de page 71 The Letters of MONSIEUR de BALZAC The first Book A Letter from the Cardinal Richelieu to the Signior of BALZAC LETTER I. SIR THough I have formerly delivered my opinion to a friend of yours concerning some of your letters he shewed me yet can I not satisfie my self before these lines afford you a more Authentical approbation thereof It is not any particular affection I bear to your person which inviteth me to this allowance but truth it self carrying with it such a Prerogative that it compelleth all who have their eys and spirits rightly placed for the delivering an unpartial opinion to represent them without disguise My censure shall be seconded by many others if there be any of a contrary conceit I dare assure you time will make them know that the defects they finde in your Letters proceed rather from their Spirits than from your Pen and how nearly they resemble the Ictericks who having the Jaundise in their eys see nothing which seemeth not unto them to carry the same colour Heretofore mean Wits admired all things above the pitch of their capacitie but now their judgements seconding their sufficiencies they approve nothing but what is within the compass of their Talent and blame all whatsoever exceedeth their Studies I dare without presumption say in what concerneth you herein that I see things as they are and declare them to be such as I see them The conceptions of your Letters are strong and as transcendent above ordinary imaginations as they are conformable to the common sense of such who are of sound judgement The Language is pure and the Words perfectly well chosen without affectation the Sense is clear and neat and the Periods accomplished with all their numbers This censure of mine is by so much the more ingenuous as that approving whatsoever is your own in your Letters I have not concealed to a certain friend of yours that I found some rectification to be desired concerning certain things you insert of other mens fearing least the liberty of your Pen should cause many to imagine that it is too often dipped in their humours and manners and draw such as are more acquainted with you by name than conversation to be otherwise conceited of you then you willingly could wish The manner wherewith you have received this my Advise causeth me that continuing my former freedom I will conclude in advertizing you that you shall be answerable before God if you suffer your Pen to sleep and that you are obliged to imploy it upon more grave and important Subjects being contented that you shall blame me if in so doing you receive not the satisfaction to see that what you perform herein shall be praised and esteemed even by those who would willingly pick occasion to controul them which is one of the most sure marks of the perfection of any Work You shall receive some in this kinde out of my Affection when I may have the opportunity to assure you that I am Your well affectionate to serve you the Cardinal of Richelieu From Paris the 4. of February 1621. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER II. MY LORD I Am as proud of the Letter you did me the Honour to write unto me as if there were a thousand Statues erected for me or as if I were assured by infallible authority of my works excellency Truly to be commended by that man our Age opposeth to all antiquity and upon whose wisdom God might well intrust the whole earths Government is a favour I could not wish for without presumption and which I am yet doubtfull whether I have really received or onely dreamed some such matter But if it be so that my eys have not deceived me and that you are he who hath bestowed that voice upon me which hath been chosen by all France to present her Petitions to the King and by the King him self to convey his Commands into Cities and Armies My Lord I must humbly then acknowledge you have already payed me before hand for all the services I can ever possibly perform unto you and I should shew my self very ungratefull if I should hereafter complain of my fortunes since upon the matter the goods and honours of this World are most ordinarily none other than the inheritance of Sots or rewards of Vice Estimation and Commendation being onely reserved for Virtue Ought I not then to rest highly satisfied having received from your mouth the same prize which Conquerours expect for their Victories yea all that your self could hope for in lieu of your great and immortal actions if there were another Cardinal of Richelieu to give them their due commendations But truely my Lord that is a thing which will always be wanting to your glorie for when by your onely presence you

a voice which desired my dispatch obliging me to end what I supposed I had but begun It is with much reluctation my Lord I am deprived of the onely contentment your absence affordeth me But since you could not receive this Letter were it any longer I am resolved to lose one part of my content to enjoy the other and to say sooner then I supposed that I am even absolutely Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 16. of Sept. 1622. To the Lord Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC LETTER VIII My Lord YOu should oftner receive Letters from me could I over-master my pain but to say truth it leaveth me not one thought free to reflect upon any thing else and what desire soever I have to give you content yet am I not able to do any thing but at the Physicians good pleasure and at the Feavours leasure whilest the Court affordeth you all content and prepareth whatsoever is pleasant for you reserving distrusts and jealousies for others I here endure torments such as wherewith one would make conscience to punish Parricides and which I would not wish to my worst enemies If notwithstanding all this in obedience to the Counsel you give me in the Letter you did me the honour to write unto me I should make my self merrie I were necessarily to take my self for some other body and become a deeper dissembler than an honest man ought to be My Melancholly is meerly corporeal yet doth my spirit give place though not consent thereto and of the two parts whereof I am composed the more worthy is over-born by the more weighty Wherefore if the whole World should act Comedies to make me laugh and though St. Germans Fair were kept in all the streets where I pass the object of death ever present before my eys bereaving me of sight would likewise bar me of content and I should remain disconsolate amidst the publick Jubilations Yea if the stone I so much dread were a Diamond or the Phylosophers Elixar I should therein take small comfort but would rather beseech God to leave me poor if he please to bestow no better Riches upon me But when I have said all be it unto me as he shall please to appoint since I am well assured my maladies will either end or I shall not for ever hold out yet should I die with some discontent if it happen before I testifie my dutifull affection towards you and the sensibility I have of your noble favours But howsoever it fare with me I would willingly make a journey to Rome there to finish the work I promised you and which you command me to undertake for the honour of this Crown Certainly if I be not the cause to make you in love with our language and to prefer it in your estimation before our Neighbour Tongues I am afraid you will be much troubled to revolt from the Roman Empire and that it will not be for the Historie of Matthew or of Hallian you will change that of Salust and Livie I will not deceive you nor delude my self yet may I tell you that my head is full of inventions and designs and if the Spring for which I much long would afford me the least glimpse of health I would contest with any who should produce the rarest things I have an infinite of loose flowers which onely want binding up into Nosegays and I have suffered others to speak any time these six years on purpose to be think my self what I have to say But I well perceive the publick shall have onely desires and hopes and truely if I spring not afresh with the Trees in stead of so many books you expect from me you shall not read any thing of mine save onely the end of this Letter and the protestation I here make unto you to die Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull Servant BALZAC The 7. of January 1623. To the Lord Cardinal de Vallette from BALZAC LETTER IX My Lord THe hope which any time this three Moneths I have had of your determination to come into this Countrey hath hitherto hindred me from writing unto you or to make use of the onely means remaining for me to be near your person But since you have supposed the speedy quitting the Court to be as fatal as to die a sudden death and that no less fortitude or time is requisite to resolve to wean our selves from pleasing things than to surmount painfull ones I will by your permission resume the commerce the common rumour caused me to surcease and will not hereafter believe you can with any less difficulty get out Paris than can the Arsenac or Loover Were it not a place all stored with inchantments and chains and which is of such power to attract and retain men as it hath been necessary to hazard divers battels to drive the Spaniards further off one might well wonder at the difficulty you finde to convey your self thence But in truth all the World doth there finde both habitations and affairs and for you my Lord since in that Countrey our Kings both enter into their first infancy and grow old as being the seat of their Empire no man can justly blame you for making over-long abode there without accusing you of over-much love to your Master and for desiring to be near his person At Rome you shall tread upon stones formerly the gods of Caesar and Pompey and shall contemplate the ruins of those rare workmanships the antiquity whereof is yet amiable and shall dayly walk among Histories and Fables But these are the pastimes of weak spirits which are pleased with trifles and not the imployments of a Prince who delighted in sayling on rough Seas and who is not come into the World to let it rest idle When you have seen the Tyber on whose banks the Romans have performed the Apprentiships of their rare victories and begun that high design which they ended not but at the extream limits of the Earth When you shall ascend the Capitol where they supposed God was as well present as in Heaven and had there inclosed the fatality of the universal Monarchy After you have crossed that great Circus dedicated to shew pleasures to the people and where the bloud of Martyrs hath been often mingled with that of Malefactours and bruit beasts I make no doubt but after you have seen those and divers other things you will grow weary of the repose and tranquility of Rome and will say they are two things more proper for the Night and Church-yards than for the Court and the Worlds eye Yet have I not any purpose to give you the least distaste of a Voyage the King hath commanded you to undertake and whereof I well hoped to have been the guide if my crazy body would have seconded the motion of my Will But truely my Lord I am deeply ingaged in this business and when I look upon my self single I sometimes have a desire to make you

without levity it accuseth innocencie without calumny And to say truth Painters and Stage-players are no way culpable of those murthers we see represented in Pictures or presented upon Theaters since therein the most cruel is the most just None can justly accuse those of falsity who make certain glasses which shew one thing for another Errour in some cases being more gracefull then truth In a word the life even of the greatest Sages is not altogether serious all their sayings are not Sermons nor is all they write either their last Testament or the confession of their Faith What can I say more Can you imagine me to be so curious as to condemne the gust of all that great multitude who flock to hear you every morning Are you perswaded that I and the people can never be of one minde That will oppose my self to the belief of honest men to the approbation of Doctors and to their authority who are eminent above others No Father I allow no such liberty to my spirit assure your self I esteem you as I ought I commend your zeal and learning yea were it truer then ever it was that to compose tedious Volumnes is no less then to commit great sins Yet if you oblige me to judge of yours by that you sent unto me I say it is very excellent in its kinde and that I will no way hinder you from obtaining a Rank among the Fathers of these modern ages But my testimony will not I hope become the onely fruit of your labours I wish with all my heart the conversion of Turks and Infidels may crown your indeavours I am perswaded all the honour this World can affoard ought to be esteemed as nothing by those who onely seek for the advancement of Gods glorie I will therefore no farther dilate my self upon this Subject nor wrong holy things by prophane praises my intention is onely to let you know I assume not so poor a part in the Churches interest as not to be extraordinarily well pleased with those who are serviceable thereto and that I am right glad besides the propension I have to esteem your amity so powerfull a perswasion as Religion is doth yet further oblige me Yours BALZAC To the Cardinal of Vallette LETTER IV. My Lord THe Letter you pleased to send me from Rome caused me to forget I was sick and I presumed to solace my self after three years of saddess ever since news was brought me of Lucidors death and the success of that fatal combate wherein you could not but be a loser on which side soever the advantage happened My Lord I doubt not but your spirit though altogether stout and couragious to support your proper misfortunes is yet mollified by the relation of their miseries who love you and where there is question rather of shewing your good nature or your constancy you will quit one virtue to acquire another I know well that in the number of your goods you reckon your friends in the first rank allowing onely the second place to your dignities and to fifty thousand Crowns rent which accompanies them and consequently I assure my self you believe you are as it were grown poor by the loss of a man who had relation unto you But I am likewise most certain how after the passing certain unpleasant dayes out of the love you bare him and having affoardeth him sufficient Testimonies of your affection he now expecting no further acknowledgement or service you will at length call to minde that it is the publick to whom you owe your cares and passions and that you are not permitted farther to afflict a spirit which is no longer yours Since the misery of this age is so general as it leaveth no one house without tears nor any one part of Europe without trouble and since Fortune is not of power to conserve even her own workmanships who are many of them fallen to ground it must needs so happen my Lord that being of the World you are to taste of the fruits it produceth and that you purchase at some hard rate the good successes daily attending you But truely the place where you are and the great designs taking you up may well furnish you with so strong and solide consolations as they need leave no work for others and my Eloquence would come too late should I imploy it after your reason which hath formerly perswaded you there being now neither precept nor Counsel in all humane wisdom unproposed to your view and since neither Seneca nor Epiotetus can say any thing save onely your thoughts I had much rather send you divertisements no way distastefull then to present you any remedies which doubtless will prove importunate These writings my Lord here inclosed shall not enter as strangers into your Cabinet they will not talk unto you of the five Praedicables of Porphiry nor of Justinians Novelles or the numbers of Algebra But you may there recreate and repose your spirits at your return from Audiences Congregations and the Consistory I could well have bestowed upon them a more eminent title then what they have I could out of these composures have framed Apologies Accusations and politick discourses yea had I pleased never so little to have extended some of my Letters they might have been called books But besides my design aiming rather to please then importune and that I tend to the height of conceptions and not at the abundance of words When I treat with you my Lord I suppose my self to be before a full assembly and do propose to my self never to write any thing unto you which Posterity ought not to read Now if sometimes from your person I pass to others or if I commend those whom I conceive are deserving I assure my self I therein performing an act of Justice and not of subjection you will be no way displeased with what I do and well hope I may conserve your favours without violating humane Laws or separating my self from civil society Your most humble servant BALZAC The 15. of July 1629. To the Cardinal of Vallete LETTER V. My LORD THough innocency be the felicity of the afflicted and that I finde in my self the satisfaction he can expect who hath not offended yet can I not so easily comfort my self And the remedies my Phylosophy affoard me are for meaner misfortunes then the loss of your favours All I can contribute to my consolation out of the assurance I have of mine innocency is the liberty I have taken to tell you so and to complain of the injustice you have done me if you have so much as suffered any to accuse me I need not seek colours to palliate my actions or words it is sufficiently known their principal objects have ever been the glory of your name and the desire to please you I beseech you likewise to call to remembrance that hard times have not hindred me from imbarking my self where my inclination called me and that I have served my Lord your Father

LETTERS OF Mounsieur de BALZAC 1.2.3 and 4th parts Translated out of French into English BY Sr RICHARD BAKER Knight and others Now collected into one Volume with a methodicall table of all the letters LONDON Printed for John Williams and Francis Eaglesfield At the Crown and Marigold in S. Pauls Churchyard 1654. LETTERS OF Mounseur de BALZAC Translated into English by Sr. RICHARD BAKER and others LONDON Printed for John Williams and Francis E●glesfeild at the Crown and Marigold in St. Pauls Church-yard 1655. To the Honourable the Lord OF NEVVBURGE ONE OF HIS MAJESTIES most honourable Privie Councell and Chancellour of the Dutchy of Lancaster MY Lord I may perhaps be thought besides the boldnesse to be guilty of absurdity in offering a Translation to him who so exactly understandeth the Originall one who if he had a mind to see how it would look in English were able to set a much fairer gloss upon it then I have done yet my Lord this absurdity may have a good colour for it may not be unpleasing to you to see your own perfection in the glasse of anothers imperfection seeing even the best Diamonds seem to take a pleasure in having of foiles Besides I have my choice of another colour for being to to passe a world of hazard in the censure of the world I am willing to passe the pikes at first and account this done having once passed yours And towards it my Lord I have two comforts one for the Reader that the Authours gold is so much over weight that though much be lost in the melting yet it holds out weight enough still to make it currant the other for myself that by this meanes I may have a testimony remaining in the world how much I honour you and in how high a degree I most affectionately am Your Lordships humble Servant RICHARD BAKER TO THE LORD CARDINALL OF RICHELIEV My LORD I Here present you Mounsieur Balzac's Letters which may well be termed new ones even after the eighth Edition for though they have long since been in possession of publick favour yet I may justly say this is the first time their Authour hath avouched them The advantagious Judgement you have delivered of him and the ardor wherewith all France hath followed your approbation well deserveth his best endeavours toward the perfectionating so excellent things I have been solicitous to draw him to this labour to the end the world might know that if I be not worthy the share I have in his respects yet that I have at least been wise enough to make right use of my good fortune and to cause it to become serviceable to the glory of my Countrey But truly were he master of his body or did his maladies afford him liberty of spirit he would not suffer any but himself to speak in this cause and his pen performing no slight acts would have consecrated his own labours and the wonders they have produced But since evils have no prefixed time of durance and in that all the good interims which hereafter may befall him are wholly to be imployed in his Book The Prince I esteemed it to small purpose to attend his health in this businesse and that it was now no longer any time to deferre the purging of these curious Letters from such blemishes as ill impressions had left upon them They shall therefore non appear in the parity wherein they were conceived and with all their naturall ornaments Besides I have added divers letters of his not as yet come to light which may serve as a subject of greater satisfaction to all men and be as a recompense of the honour wherewith he hath collected the former And truly my Lord had it been possible to place in the Frontispiece of this Book a more illustrous name then yours or should Mounsieur de Balzac's inclination and mine have been farre from any such intention yet would not the order of things or the law of decency have permitted any other reflection then what I now make I speak not at this present of that dazeling greatnesse whereunto you are elevated nor of that so rare and necessary vertue which rightly to recognize the greatest King on earth hath esteemed himself not to be over able I will only say I had reason to submit an eloquence produced in the shade and formed in solitarinesse to this other eloquence quickned both with voice and action causing you to reign in sovereignity at all assemblies Certainly my Lord you are more powerfull by this incomparable quality then by the authority wherein the King hath placed you The only accent of your voice hath a hidden property to charm all such as hearken unto you none can be possessed with any so wilfull passions who will not be appeased by the reasons you propound and after you have spoken you will at all times remain master of that part of man no way subject to the worlds order and which hath not any dependency upon lawfull power or tyrannicall usurpation This is a truth my Lord as well known as your name and which you so solidly confirmed at the last assembly of the Notables as that in the great diversity of humours and judgements whereof it was composed there was peradventure this only point well resolved on That you are the most eloquent man living This being true I can no way doubt but the perusall of this Book I offer unto you will extraordinarily content you and that you will be pleased to retire thither sometimes to recreate your spirits after agitation and to suspend those great thoughts who have for their object the good of all Europe It is a book my Lord wherein you shall find no common thing but the Title where entertaining some particular person Mounsieur de Balzac reades Lessons to all men and where amidst the beauty of Complements and dexterity of Jeasting he often teacheth of the most sublime point of Philosophy I mean not that wrangling part thereof which rejecteth necessary verities to seek after unprofitable ones which cannot exercise the understanding without provoking passions nor speak of moderation without distemper and putting the soul into disorder But of that whereby Pericles heretofore made himself master of Athens and wherewith Epaminondas raised himself to the prime place of Greece which tempereth the manners of particulars regulateth the obligation of Princes and necessarily bringeth with it the felicity of all States where they command This book will make it apparent even to your enemies that your life hath been at all times equally admirable though not alwayes alike glorious How you have conserved the opinion of your vertue even in the time of your hardest fortunes and how in the greatest fury of the tempest and in the most extreme violence of your affairs the integrity of your actions hath never been reduced to the only testimony of your conscience To conclude It is in this Book my Lord where I suppose you will be pleased to read the

have appeased the spirits of an incensed multitude when by your powerfull reasons you have induced Christian Princes to set the Native Countrey of Jesus Christ at liberty to undertake the Holy War when you have gained whole Nations to the Church as well by the force of your Example as by that of your Doctrine who is of ability to pay you the reputation which you in all right deserve and where shall you finde so excellent a witness for all the marvellous Acts of your life as I have of my watchings and studies I cannot chuse but reiterate this and my joy is over-just to be concealed Is it possible this great wit and high spirit which hath been imployed even from his first youth in perswading Princes in giving instructions to Embassadours and hath been listned unto by old men who have seen four Reigns Is it possible I say this man should value me on whose approbation all enemies agree nor is there among all men a contrary party or diversity of belief in this point If I had a purpose to disquiet the repose of this Kingdom I would seek for the consent of slack spirits and I should stand in need in my favour of all sorts of men were I to study for reputation in a popular State but truely I never affected confusion or disorder and my designs have ever aimed at the pleasing of a few For since you have declared your self in favour as he likewise hath done for whom France at this day envieth Italy and since you carry after you the most solid part of the Court I am content to let the rest run astray with Turks and Infidels who make the greater number of mankinde Yet my Lord I cannot think that any hereafter will be so far in love with himself or so obstinate in his own opinion as not to be a Convertite by the onely reading the Letter you honoured me with and who in conclusion will not subscribe to your great judgement And if it be certain that truth it self could not be strong enough against you there is no question but that side whereon you two shall agree ought to be universally followed For my part my Lord let all men say what they will I fix my self with closed eys there and what enemies soever the reputation you have allowed me procure me yet knowing your abilities and what you are I will be no farther solicitous for mine own interest or future benefit since it is become your cause I am My Lord Your most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC The 10. of March 1624. To the Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER III. My Lord I Humbly intreat you to be pleased by these presents to permit me to confirm unto you the assurance of my most humble service and that you would allow me to crave some news from you It is the onely thing wherein I am now curious and which in the very depth of my retiredness obligeth me to reflect sometimes upon worldly affairs But happen what can I am most assured you will remain constant even amidst publick ruins and that Fortune cannot bereave you of those advantages she never gave you Yet could I wish that your life were somewhat more calm and less glorious And I suppose that Artimiza's goodness having so great Affinity to what is infinite which is of power to procure love even amidst the most savage beasts doth in right deserve to obtain truce and repose among reasonable Creatures It is not in us to be Authours of hereafter nor do our wishes rule the event of humane affairs But surely if there be any Justice in Heaven whereof there is no doubt and if God have an eye to worldly matters we must believe the tears of upright persons shall not be shed in vain or that your Queen shall wax old in her misfortunes yet at the least since our cogitations be still within our own compass and we being not forbidden to hope well let us make the best use we may of this small portion of Liberty yet remaining The virtue she hath hitherto made use of in resisting her afflictions will happily one day serve to moderate her felicities And if God strook a certain Woman with suddain death for that she should have been seated in the place he destinated to this great Princess he surely will not suffer that man to live long who hath so highly injured her However my Lord it is great honour unto you not to have failed her in her afflictions and to have under-valued all worldly Prerogatives to be unfortunate with her I know that herein you satisfie your self with the testimony of a clear conscience and that it is not so much for opinion of men you undertake Worthy actions as for your own private satisfactian Nor are you a little to comfort your self in that at this present you are praised even by your very enemies and to see your resolutions redoubtable to those who have great Armies on foot and the chief forces of the State under their Command I would say more did I not fear you might suppose I had some private design in my Discourse or seek hereby to prepare you to receive some kinde of importunity from me But I most humbly beseech your Lordship to be confident that I being of free condition am little acquainted with flattery and that I am not so given over to gain but that notwithstanding you were still in Avignion I would ever as really as at this hour remain My Lord Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 15. of May 1623. To the Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER IV. My Lord WEre I not well acquainted with my own insufficiency I might well be possessed with no small vanity upon the Letter you did me the Honour to write unto me and might well imagine my self to be some other thing than I was the day before I received it But knowing it is no other than a meer favour you pleased to afford me I will not flatter my self in my good fortune nor lessen the Obligation due unto you in presuming to merit the same If Virtue required any recompence out of her self she would not receive it from other mouth than yours and your reputation is at this day so Just and General as it is become a Verity wherein the Wise agree with the Vulgar I do therefore account my self very happy to be reputed of by a Person who is able to give a value to things of themselves worthless and I attribute so much to your Judgement that I will no longer hold any mean opinion of my self lest therein I should contradict you Truely my Lord very difficultly will my parts any way answer your expectation The time my Favour affoordeth me for rest is so short I can hardly imploy it to other purpose than to complain of its cruelty I have enough to do to live and to make that good I keep my self as carefully as though I were

composed of Christal or as if I were some necessary matter for the good of all men Yet my Lord you have so great power over me that I will strain my self to shew my obedience and to give you an account of my leasure since you please to think I ought not to deprive the World thereof It is better to utter glorious dreams than to labour in gross designs and there are certain Acts of the spirit so excellent that Princes are too poor and their power too slender to afford them their full merit But my Lord you have often given so great testimonies of me that if I should not have some presumption it were fit I lost my memory wherefore out of the assurance you give me that my Stile doth not stray from that perfection which men imagine but never saw nor have attained unto I will enter upon a design which shall amaze our vulgar wits and cause those who have hitherto supposed they surmount others to see I have found what they seek for Whatsoever I do I will at least have you at all times present to my thoughts thereby to oblige my self not to come short before so great an example nor will I forget the place where at this present I am to the end not to omit any thing worthy the Ancient Rome It is impossible at once to have so glorious objects and degenerous thoughts or not to be transported with all those Triumphs of times past and with the glory of our age But this is not the place where I intend to speak it being of too small extent to receive so illimitable a subject It shall therefore suffice in conclusion of this my Letter to tell you that since upon your advice all posterity dependeth and the whole Court expecteth from you what they are or are not to believe I cannot chuse my Lord but to esteem my self right happy even amidst my greatest miseries if you still continue unto me your equal Judgement with the honour of your favours BALZAC From Rome this 10. of April 1623. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu from Monsieur Balzac LETTER V. My Lord MY purpose was at my arrival in France to have presented my Service unto you in the place of your Residence that I might have had the honour to see you but my health having not been such as to afford me the free disposition of my self I am forced to defer my contentment in that kinde and to intreat to hear some news from you till I be able to go to understand them from your Self In the interim the better to chear my Spirits I will believe they are as good as I wish them and will imagine this Collick of yours whereof I had so great apprehension shall be drowned in the fountain of Pougues This truly is so generally desired and sought for at Gods hands by so many mouths that I am confident he will not in this point leave the felicity he hath prepared for our times unperfect and that he loveth the World too well to deprive it of the good you are to Perform Armies being defeated new forces may be set on foot and a second Fleet may be rigged after the first perish But if we should want your Lordship the World would not last long enough to be able to repair such a loss And the King might have just cause to bewail the same in the midst of his greatest Triumphs He hath indeed an inexhaustable Kingdom of men The Wars do daily afford him Captains The number of Judges is not much inferiour to that of Criminals It is onely of wise men and such as are capable to guide the Stern of States whereof the scarcity is great and without flattery to finde out your Equal herein all Nature had need put it self into Action and that God long promised the same to mankind before he be pleased to produce him I say nothing my Lord I am not ready to swear in verification of my belief or which I confirm not by the Testimony of your very Enemies The authority of Kings is not so Sovereign as that is you exercise over the Souls of such as hearken unto you Your spirit is right powerfull and daily imployed in great affairs and which refresheth it self in agitation of ordinary occurrents You are destinated to fill the place of that Cardinal which at this present maketh one of the beautifull parties of heaven and who hath hitherto had no Successour though he have had Heirs and Brothers This being thus who will doubt that publick Prayers are to be offered for so precious and necessary a health as yours or that your life ought to be dear unto you within you are to conserve the glory of our age As for me my Lord who am assaulted on all sides and to whom nothing is remaining save hope being the onely benefit of those who are deprived of all others since my misfortune will needs make me that publick sacrifice which is to be charged with the pains of all the people and pay for all the World I could be well content you should send me your Collick and that it come to accompany the Feaver the Scyatica and the Stone Since of so many diseases there can but one Death be composed Nor is it time any longer to be a good husband of what is already lost But I will not enter further into this discourse whereof I shall finde no end and it were to small purpose to tell you he is the most wretched man in the World who so much honoureth you for fear you should reject my affection as some fatal thing and least it avail me not at all to protest that I am my Lord Your most humble and most obedient Servant BALZAC Septemb. 4. 1622. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu LETTER VI. MY LORD AFter the sealing of these presents a messenger passed by this place by whom I understand that the Pope hath created you a Cardinal I make no question but you received this news as a matter indifferent unto you and that your spirit being raised above the things of this World you behold them with one and the same Aspect Yet since herein the publick good meeteth with your particular interest and that for your sake the Church rejoyceth even in all the most irksome Prisons of Europe it is not reasonable you should deprive your self of a contentment no less chast than those heaven it self affordeth us and which proceedeth from the same cause All good men my Lord ought in these times to desire great Dignities as necessary means to undertake great matters If they do otherwise besides that God will demand a strict account from them of those his graces whereof they have made no good use the World hath likewise just subject of complaint seeing them abandon it as a prey to the wicked and that their desire of ease causeth them to forsake the publick good This my Lord is to let you know you are to reserve your

humility for those actions passing between God and your self But that in other cases you can neither have too much Wealth nor over great power since obedience is due to wisdom there being certain virtues not practiseable by the poor I do therefore infinitely rejoyce to see you at this present raised to that eminent dignity wherein you fill the Universe with Splendor and where your sole example will I hope carry so great weight as to cause the Church to return to the Purity of its first Infancy Truely if there be any hope to expect this happiness and to see rebellious spirits perswaded as we behold their Cities forced you doubtless are the man from whom we are to expect this felicity and who is onely able to finish the victories of Kings by the subversion of misbelievers To this effect doth all Christendom exact these atchievements at your hands as a last instruction and the general peace of consciences and my self who have thus long been in search after the Idea of Eloquence without finding among us any which is not either counterfeit or imperfect am very confident you will bring it to light in the same excellency as it was when at Rome the Tyrants were condemned and when it defended the oppressed Provinces Though Purple be very refulgent yet will it receive a farther luster by this your dignity carrying command where-ever it cometh and which is particularly so proper for the conduct of Souls as it is onely to that power whereto they will submit themselves My Lord if I have any hope to be known in after ages or that my name may pass to posterity they shall finde this consideration to be the first Obligation unto me of seeking the Honour of your acquaintance and that having heard you speak you did so absolutely purchase both my thoughts and affections that since then I have ever reflected upon you as on an extraordinary person and have ever passionately remained My lord Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 16. of December 1622. To the Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER VII My Lord HAd the ways been safe or if the good order you have taken for publick security had not been subject to the like success as are wholesome Laws which are seldom well observed I should not be necessitated to take a longer time than you allotted me when I parted from Fountainebleau nor had I till now been constrained to spin out the time of my dispatch But though your Commandments are all powerfull in me yet you know necessity will first be obeyed nor will you I hope be displeased that I have made choice of a Prison whereto I am accustomed to avoid another not so commodious for me This hath not hapned but to my extreme grief since I have not been able to be a witness of the most illustrious life of our age and have thereby lost half a year of your Actions which well nigh fill up all our History For though we are not so remote from the World that no news can come to us yet they pass so many places as it is impossible they receive not divers impressions or that they should arrive here in their purity since they are often altered from the very Lover yet I have understood and Fame hath published even in desarts the great conflicts by you undergone and atchieved for the Honour and reputation of France and how you have subdued the subtilties of strangers being in truth more to be feared than their Forces I hear how Italy hath spent all her practises without hurting any and how those States-men who made account to Seignorize in all Assemblies and to be Maisters in all reasons of State were unable to defend themselves against you but with passion and choller nor to complain of any other thing but that you perswaded them to whatsoever they were before-hand resolved not to yield So as my Lord those who tearmed us Barbarians and by their treaties commonly took revenge of our victories have in the end found wisdom on this side the Alpes and have well perceived there is a man who hath abilities to hinder them from deceiving others They stood amazed to see a Servant who would not suffer there should be any Master greater than his Sovereign Who was as sensible of the least evils of his Countrey as of his proper sorrows supposing himself to be wounded upon the least apprehension when any made shew of trenching upon the dignity of this Crown But when they found you applied present remedies to all such inconveniences as they objected that you prevented the difficulties they offered to propose that you dived into their Souls drawing thence their closest intentions and how at the first conference you made answer to what they reserved for a second Then it was indeed when their Flegm was turned into Choler and when you put their humane wisdoms and politick Maxims to a stand So as we see it is sufficient onely to let Good appear to cause it to be beloved and truly if Reason had the like power over the Will as it hath over the Understanding all those Italians doubtless who heard you speak had returned good French men and the safety of Christendom together with the security of her Princes had been but one days work Forreign Wars had been ended in your Chamber nor should we now have any more than one business upon us and the Kings Forces had at this present been imployed onely in suppressing the Rebels of his own Kingdom My Lord I hope you are perswaded though I could not probably expect any slight occurrents from the place where you are yet that I received these with much emotion and transport it not being in my power to dissemble my joy when I understood how their Majesties are not weary of your service and how after having tried divers Councels it was in conclusion thought fit to follow yours that you precede in the affairs of Europe by being conductour of the Fortune of France Truely of all exteriour contentments there is not any whereof I am so sensible as of that But on the other side when I understand that your health is dayly assaulted or threatned by some accident that the Tranquility your conscience affords you hinders you not from having ill nights And how amidst the happy successes befalling you life it self is notwithstanding sometimes tedious unto you then indeed I must confess they touch me in the tenderest part of my Soul And whilest the Court makes thousands of feigned Protestations unto you there is an Hermite some hundred leagues from you who mourns for your maladies with unfeigned tears I know not whether or no I may presume to say I love you yet is it not probable you will take offence at a word wherewith you know God himself is well pleased My Lord I do in such manner love you as I am either sick upon the relation of your indisposition or if the news be current

that you are recovered yet have I still an apprehension of what alteration each hour may bring upon you Ought it then to be in the fits of your Feaver and in your inquietude for want of sleep that you understand these publick acclamations and the due praises you have purchased Shall the Senses suffer and the Spirits rejoyce or they continue tortured amidst these Triumphs or that you at once perform two contrary actions and at the same time have need as well of moderation as patience If Virtue could be miserable or if that Sect which acknowledgeth no other evil but pain nor any greater good than pleasure had not been generally condemned the Divine providence had received complaints from all parts of this Kingdom nor had there been an honest man known who for your sake had not found something farther to be desired in the conduct of this World But my Lord you understand much better than I do that it is onely touching the felicity of beasts we are to believe the body and not concerning ours residing onely in the supreme part of our selves and which is as smally sensible of those disorders committed below her as those in Heaven can be offended by the tempests of the Air or vapours of the Earth This being true God forbid that by the estate of your present constitution I should judge of that of your condition or that I should not esteem him perfectly happy who is superlatively wise You may please to consider that howbeit you have shared with other men the infirmities of humane nature yet the advantage resteth soly on your side since upon the matter there is onely some small pain remaining with you instead of an infinity of errours passions and faults falling to our lots Besides I am confident that the term of your sufferings is well nigh expired that the times hereafter prepares right solide and pure contentments for you and a youth after its season as you are become old before your time The King who hath use of your long living makes no unprofitable wishes Heaven hears not the prayers that the Enemies of this State offer We know no successour that is able to effect what you have not yet finished and it being true that our Forces are but the Arms of your head and that your Counsels have been chosen by God to re-establish the affairs of this age we ought not to be apprehensive of a loss which should not happen but to our successours It shall then be in your time my Lord I hope that oppressed Nations will come from the Worlds end to implore the protection of this Crown that by your means our Allies will repair their losses and that the Spaniard shall not be the sole Conquerour but that we shall prove the Infranchizers of the whole earth In your time I trust the Holy Sea shall have her opinions free nor shall the inspirations of the Holy Ghost be oppugned by the artifice of our Enemies resolutions will be raised worthy the ancient Italy for defence of the common cause To conclude it will be through your Prudence my Lord that there shall no longer be any Rebellion among us or Tyranny among men that all the Cities of this Kingdom shall be seats of assurance for honest men that novelties shall be no farther in request save onely for colours and fashions of Attire that the people will resign Liberty Religion and the Common-wealth into the hands of superiours and that out of law-full government and loyall obedience there will arise that felicity Politicians search after as being the end of civile life My hope is my Lord that all this will happen under your sage conduct and that after you have setled our repose and procured the same for our Allies you shall enjoy your good deeds in great tranquility and see the estate of those things endure whereof your self have been a principal Authour All good men are confident these blessed events will happen in your age and by your advice As for me who am the meanest among those who justly admire your Virtues I shall not I hope prove the slackest in the expression of your Merits Since therefore they of right exact a general acknowledgement if I should fail in my particular contribution I were for ever unworthy the Honour I so ambitiously aspire unto the heighth whereof is to be esteemed Your Lordships most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC To the Lord Bishop of Air. LETTER VIII My Lord IF at the first sight you know not my Letter and that you desire to be informed who writes unto you It is one more old-like than his Father and as over-worn as a Ship having made three voyages to the Indies and who is no other thing than the Relicks of him whom you saw at Rome In those days I sometimes complained without cause and happily there was then no great difference between the health of others and my infirmity Howsoever be it that my imagination is crazed or that my present pain doth no longer admit of any comparison I begin to lament the Feaver and Scyatica as lost goods and as pleasures of my youth now past See here to what terms I am reduced and how as it were I live if it may be called living to be in a continual contestation with death True it is there is not sufficient efficacy in all the words whereof this World makes use to express the miseries I indure they leave no place either for the Physicians skill or the sick mans patience nor hath Nature ordained any other remedies for the same save onely poison and precipices But I much fear least I suffer my self to be transported with pain or indure it less Christianly than beseemeth me being a witness of your Virtue and having had the means to profit my self by your Example My Lord it is now time or never I subdue this wicked spirit which doth forcibly transport my will and that the old Adam obey the other Yet doth it not a little grieve me to be indebted to my miserie for my Souls health and that I much desire it were some other more noble consideration than nessitie should cause me to become an honest man But since the means to save us are bestowed upon us and that we chuse them not it is fitting that reason convince our sensibilities causing us to agree to what is otherwise distastefull unto us At the worst we must at all times confess that we cannot be said to perish when we are safely cast on shore by some Shipwrack and it may be if God did not drive me as he doth out of this life I should never dream of a better I will refer the rest to be related unto you at your return from Italy with purpose to lay open my naked Soul unto you together with my thoughts in the same simplicity they spring in me you are the onely Person from whom I expect relief and I hold my self richer in the possession of your

good opinion than if I enjoyed the favours of all earthly Princes and all the wealth of their Territories and Kingdoms Truely this is the first time since I writ unto you from Lions I have made use of my hands and I have received a hundred Letters from my Friends without answering one Hereby my Lord you see there is no other consideration your self excepted of force to cause me to break silence since for all others I have lost the use of speaking Yet I beseech you to think notwithstanding all this my affection to be neither penurious nor ambitious The riches I crave at your noble hands are purely spiritual and I am at this present in an estate wherein I have more need to settle some order for the affairs of my Conscience than to reflect upon the establishment of my worldly Fortunes But my Lord to change discourse and a little to retire my self from my pains what do you thus long at Rome Doth the Pope dally with us and will he leave to his successour the glorie of the best Election can be made Is he not affraid lest it be given out he hath some intelligence with his Adversaries and that he taketh not the advice of the holy Ghost in what concerneth the Churches Honour for Gods cause bring us with speed this news provided it be the same the King demands and all good men desire I hope it shall not be said you have spoken Italian all this while to no purpose or that you can accuse his predictions as erronious who never falsified his word with you and who is perfectly My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 2. of July 1622. To the Lord Bishop of Air. For the true understanding of this Letter it is necessarie to be acquainted with the Gibbrige the French residing at Rome use to speak who frame a new kinde of Language to themselves composed of Italian words having onely French terminations LETTER IX My Lord I Think you will never be weary of going to Cortege and that you will for ever have an apprehension of the Crepuscule all the days of your life for it is that you have long enough caused the curtains of your Carroach to be drawn in presence of those of Cardinals and that you may well be ere now acquainted with the Court of Rome even from the Papale subjects to those who desire to be admitted into the first degrees of sacred Orders For my part I should soon be weary in seeing daily one and the same thing and in beginning the day from the first hour of night What can there be so pleasing in the place where you are that should deserve to stay you there In fair weather the Sun is dangerous half the year they breath nothing but smoak and in the rest it raineth so frequently that it seemeth some Sea hangeth over the Citie of Rome But it may be you take pleasure in seeing the Pope a body over shaken and trembling with age and infirmities who hath no other thing than Ice in his veins and Earth in his Visage I cannot imagine how this object can afford you any great contentment or that you are much taken with the society and Company of the great multitude of my Lords his assistants partaking of the one and the other signature Nor can it be Carriofile whom you so often over-rule who should intreat you to stay there for the furtherance of his affairs For being as he is a Popeline who of the Family of the Cardinal Ludovisio who affords him his full share it cannot be but well with him I conclude therefore my Lord that I cannot guess the cause of your stay if you take not the pains to tell me For to imagine Monsieur de Luzon not to be as yet a Cardinal were no less than to wrong the Kings credit and to judge amiss of publick acknowledgement I am here at the Antipodes where there is not any thing but Air the Earth and a River One had here need make above ten days journeys to finde a man wherefore having in this place no other communication but with the dead I can relate no other news unto you but of the other World Is it not true that he who would have burnt his shirt had it known his secrets would hardly have been drawn to make his general confession and that Alexander the Great would with much difficulty have been induced to purchase Paradise by humility What say you of poor Brutus who killed his Father thinking to confound a Tyrant and no less to repent himself at his death in having loved Virtue than if he had followed an unfaithfull Mistress Do you not yet remember the first Consels whose words smelt of Garlick and green roasted meat think you not they made use of their hands instead of feet being rough and durty as they were and wore Shooes instead of Gloves These men were not acquainted either with Sugar Musk or Amber-greice They had not as then any gods of Gold or Goblets of Silver They were ignorant in all sorts of sciences save onely to make War and to have domination over men I lately read how in Venice in former times men of greatest quality usually married with common women and that either the good Husbandry or the mutual correspondency was such among the Citizens that one Wife served three brothers Think you that Francis the first is called Great for having vanquished the Swisses or to distinguish him from his Grandchild or by reason of his great nose Give me reason why Selim slew his Father his Brothers and Nephews and after all this died but once Were it not that I fear to be wearisom unto you I should never make an end of my news yea I should be sufficiently stored to entertain you my whole life-time But it is high time that unprofitable speeches give place to Pious Cogitations and that I leave you among your Myrtles and Orange-trees where you are never better accompanied than when you are alone I will here conclude rather out of discretion then for want of matter But this shall not be till after I have said that of all those who have any share in your favours there is not any who is therein more proud of his good Fortune than my self or more really than I am My Lord Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 25. of Sept. 1622. To the Lord Bishop of Air from BALZAC LETTER X. My Lord THese times are fatal for abating those heads appearing above others and for changing the face of things and questionless if this course still continue the King will either be forced to seek out a new people or to resolve himself for a solitary Reign All the Court is black with mournings there is not a French-man who doth not either weep or is bewailed and War causeth onely slight sorrows yet even among those whose loss we lament there are always some we willingly leave and whose Catastrophe may serve us

as a consolation for the rest Without further ambiguity the man is seized on who grew lean by the well-fare of others and who was one of those pale and sober persons born for the Ruine of States there is some appearance he died as well of the Purples of M. L. C. D. R. as of his own and that you sent him his first surfeit from Rome where he truely considering how there was no longer any favour to follow nor Favorite to flatter he would leave to live any longer as though he had no further affairs in this World Howsoever it be we are herein to acknowledge the finger of God and to confess he doth sometimes punish Malefactours without observing the forms of Justice at least it cannot be denied but God loveth the Queen extraordinarily since he reserveth to himself the revenge of all her injuries nor will let any thing remain in the World which may prove distastefull unto her If she desired the Sea should be calm in the most stormy days of Winter or two Autumnes to happen each year I am confident of Natures change in conformity to her will nor is there any thing she cannot obtain of Heaven which granteth the very prayers she hath not as yet begun I am here some hundred and fifty leagues from these fine things where I study to solace my self as much as possibly I can and to this end I make my self drunk every day But to free you from any sinister opinion of what I say I assure you it is onely with the water of Pougues which surely would be Ink were it black so that I surfeit without sinning against the rules of Sobrietie and any frolicks are as Austeer as the Minimes fastings I have a great desire to enter covenants with my Physicians whereby it might be granted that all agreeable things should be wholesom and that one might speedily recover his health by the scent of flowers instead of their Medicines which are ordinarily second miseries succeeding the former yet without spending much time or trouble I have made all impossibilities passible with me and in the case I am I would swallow fire were it prescribed me for the recovery of my health It is no small advantage not to be reduced to these tearms no more than you are and not to know what it is to suffer or complain So is it for the general good of the whole World that GOD hath given you this vigorous health to imploy it in the service of Kings and in your Vigilancy over the conduct of people As for me who should not happily make so good use thereof as I ought and who am far more inclinable to Vice than to Virtue I hold it convenient I be always crazie and that GOD take from me the means to offend him whereof otherwise I should infallibly make but over-much use I write not at this present to M. it is all I can do to finish this Letter in hast and to tell you what you long since knew that I am my Lord Your most humble passionate Servant BALZAC October the 15. 1622. To the Lord Bishop of Air from BALZAC LETTER XI MY LORD I Am infinitely glad to understand by your Letters of your safe return into France and that you have now no further use of Cyphers for the expression of your minde to my Lord the Cardinal of Richelieu I shall at your pleasure I hope understand the particulars of your Voyage and what you have seen at Naples and Venice worthy your content This is not out of any great curiosity I have for these things or that I admire dumbe Marble or Pictures being no way so beautifull as the Persons These trifles are to be left for the Vulgar with whom the same Objects limit their imagination and sight and who of all times reflect meerly upon the present and of all things onely upon the appearance but for my part I am of a contrary opinion There are not in the whole World any Palaces so sumptuous or of so high a structure which are not far under my thoughts and I conceive in my spirit a poor hermitage to the foundation whereof many more materials are projected than were requisite for establishing a Republick You see here my Lord how in some sort I play the Prince amidst my poverty and with what insolency I scorn what the World so much admireth I am as haughty as though I were a Minister of State or as if this last change in the Kingdom had been made for me alone yet you know well that I call not my self L.M.D.L.V. and how if there had been none but my self to assault my Lord the Comte of Schambergs Virtue it still had continued in the same place where it hath been reverenced of all men Each man hath his several censure concerning this great news but whatsoever they can say I assure my self there can nothing befall that Lord whereto he is not at all times prepared and that he hath lived too long not to know that Fortune taketh special delight in dallying with the affairs of France and hath from all Ages made choice of our Court as the Theater of her follies If he had not been provided of the government of this Citie and what time the King commanded him to come thence his fall had been more fearfull then it was but it is Gods will that Augolesme should be the fatal retreat of the afflicted and truely all things well considered it is no great down-come to light upon a Mountain Now truely if there be any thing amiss in the administration of the Kings monies he cannot be taxed for introducing this errour for he found it there and besides the necessity of the times have ever resisted his good intentions and have hindred the appearance of what he had in his heart for the reformation of disorders It is now necessary the King undertake so glorious a design and set his hand to that part of the State which hath more need of redress than all the rest But he is first to begin by the moderation of his Spirit and he shall after gain their loyalty who serve him If those Princes our Elders have seen had considered that the Coyn coming into their Exchecquers was no less than the bloud and tears of their poor Subjects whom they have often forced to fly into Forrests and pass the Seas to save themselves from Taxes and impositions they would have been more scrupulous and cautelous how they had touched upon so dreadfull undertakings at least they would not have been at once both indigent and unjust nor have amazed all the Princes of Europe who could never conceive why they borrowed their own moneys of their Treasurers who receive their revenews as they purchase their own strong places from their Governours who command therein Truely it is very strange the Great Turk can intrust his Wives to the vigilancy of others and assure themselves their Chastity shall thereby be conserved yet that Kings

know not to whom they may safely encharge their Treasures But the true reason is for that an honest man is by so much more difficultly found then an Eunuch by how much Miracles are more rare than Monsters Great Fortitude is requisite for the attaining of honesty but the will onely sufficeth to become covetous and the most harmless have hands and may happen to have temptations Were it my part to play the reformer and to preach before the Prelates I would enlarge my self upon this Subject but in the condition wherein I stand it is sufficient I approve not the ill and have a good opinion of the present State provided the report be current that there is now no obstacle between the King and the Queen his Mother likely to hinder them from meeting and that things are reduced to those terms wherein Nature hath placed them Then will the face of the State shortly resume the same beauty the late King bestowed thereon and God will with a full hand pour his Graces upon so just a Government Though my Lord the Cardinal of Richelieu were onely near publick affairs without touching them there is no question but he would bring a blessing to all France and though he intimated nothing to the King yet that he would at least inspire whatsoever were necessary for the good of his Subjects and Dignity of his Crown I will reserve to speak as I ought of this rare Virtue till my great Work come to light Where I will render every man his right and condemn even those as culpable whom the Parliaments crouch unto There shall it be where I will canvass the Court of Rome which I always separate from the Church with as much force and freedom as he used from whose mouth we have seen lightning to issue and Thunder to be thrown out There is not any thing of so fair assemblance whose deformities I unmask not There is nothing of eminencie from one end of the World to the other I over-turn not I will discover the defects of Princes and States I will expugne Vice wheresoever it is hidden and with what Protection soever it is palliated To conclude I will pass as severe a Judgement as was that of the Areopagites in times past or of the Inquisition at this present Yet my Lord in this my common censure I will take a particular care of the Queen Mothers reputation and will let all the World see that what heretofore others have called Virtue is the natural habitude of this great Princess In the place for others appointed for Afflictions and Calamities She shall together with the King receive onely Flowers and Crowns and as her innocencie had saved her from the general deluge had she then lived so will it cause her to Tryumph in my Story amidst the ruins of others I have not the faculty of Flattering but the Art onely to speak the Truth in good terms and the Actions you see had need be more eminent than those you have read of if I equal them not by my Words This being thus my Lord as I hope you doubt not imagine in what terms I will Justifie the R. D. L. R. and in what sort I will intreat her Enemies if I have a minde to it I will make it one day appear that C. C. hath been as cruel a Monster as those who devour whole Cities and denounce War against all Humane and Divine things One will imagine by the marks I give him that R. was a Magician which dayly pricked some Image of Wax with needles and who disturbed the repose of all Princes Courts of his time by the force of his Charms The truth is I will do great matters provided my courage quail not on his part whence I expect it should come and to whom by a kinde of strict Obligation I am excited to undertake this Judgement which will be no less famous than that of Michael Angelo At our next meeting I will more particularly acquaint you with the whole design of my work with its order ornaments and artifice you shall there see whether or no I make good use of those hours I sometimes obtain from the Tyranny of my Physicians and lingring Maladies In the interim do me the honour to love me still nor think I speak the Court-language or that I complement with you when I assure you I am more than any man living My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 28. of December 1622. Another Letter to the Lord Bishop of Air. LETTER XII My Lord IT must needs be your Oath of Fealty doth yet continue and that the Ceremony you are imployed in be longer than I imagined since I have no news from you for I must freely confess unto you I am not so slightly perswaded of my self as to have any thought as that you neglect me Besides I am certain that publick Faith and what hath ever been sworn upon Altars and the Gospels are not more inviolable than your word and that it will stand good though Heaven and Earth should start Besides I can less conjecture that you are hindred by want of health whereof I hope you enjoy so large a treasure as it is like to continue as long as the World lasteth It were a wrong to me should you alleadge sickness and no less than to wrangle with me for a thing in such manner appropriated to my self as I cannot communicate it to any other I will therefore imagine whatsoever you will have me to think you may love me if you please without taking the pains to tell me so But for my part how importunate soever I am herein yet am I resolute to write unto you till you cut off my hands and to publish so long as I have a tongue that I am Sir Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 16. of December 1622. To the Lord Bishop of Air from BALZAC LETTER XIII My Lord YOu cannot loose me how little care soever you take to keep me The Heavens must necessarily infuse new affections in me and utterly alter my inclinations if they intend to inhibite me to be your servant Yet doth it not a little grieve me you do not testifie what I know you believe and that having the power to make me happy by the least of your Letters I have more trouble to impetrate this favour than I should finde in the obtaining of three Declarations from the King and as many Briefs from his Holiness But all this notwithstanding I cannot be perswaded you place me among matters of meer indifferency or that you no longer remember what you have promised with so large protestations which I hold to be most Authentical I rather for the satisfaction of my thoughts will be confident you have resolved to love me in secret thereby to avoid all jealousie and will believe there is more cunning than coldness in your silence were it otherwise had I really lost your Favours certainly I would not survive so deep a

discomfort since there is not any banishment shipwrack or sinister fortune I could not rather require at Gods hands than such a loss But these discourses are as much as to suppose impossibilities or to invent dreams I will therefore leave them to let you understand some news from me I can onely say the Air of this Countrey is not offensive unto me for to assure you that I am in health were too great a boldness I confess I have now then some pleasing pauses I injoy certain good hours which make me remember my former health But there is great difference between this imperfect estate of mine and a constitution comparable to that of yours who have life sufficient to vivifie thirty such worn bodies as mine which needs but one blast to blow it down Howsoever my Physicians have promised to make me a new man and to restore unto me what I have lost I should be well contented they were men of their words and that I might at my ease attend all occasions to testifie how passionately I am Your most humble and most affectionate Servant BALZAC The 6. of Jan. 1623. To the Reverend Bishop of Air from BALZAC LETTER XIIII My Lord SInce you have as much care of me as of your Diocess and in that I perceive you would imagine some defect even in the felicities you expect in Heaven should you be saved without me I will use my utmost indeavours to cause that your desire of my Spiritual good prove not unprofitable and to make my self capable of the good counsel you gave me by your Letter True it is I have been so long habituated in vice I have almost utterly forgotten my state of Innocencie so as a particular Jubile for my self onely were no more than necessary On the other side the pious motions I have are so poor and imperfect that of all the flames the Primative Christians have felt and endured I should hardly support the meer smoak Yet my Lord even in this bad state wherein I now stand do I expect a Miracle from my Maker who is onely able to raise Children out of the hardest Quarries nor will I believe his mercie hath finished what he intendeth to effect for the good of Mortals For since he hath placed Ports upon the shoars of most dangerous Seas and given some kinde of dawning even to the darkest nights it may be there is yet something reserved for me in the secrets of his Providence and that if hitherto I have ranged out of the right way he will not any longer suffer me to stray or tire my self in the track of vice And truely I must here though much to my shame acknowledge the truth unto you with those few drops of corrupt bloud which is all I have left I am plunged in all those passions wherewith the soundest bodies are pressed yea Tyrants who burn whole Cities upon the first motion of rage and choller and who allow themselves to act what unlawfull thing soever do nothing more than my self save onely to enjoy those things I desire and to execute those designs remaining onely in my will I wanting their power to perpetrate the like Nor can the Feaver the Stone nor the Scytica as yet tame my rebellious spirit or cause it to become capable of Discipline and if time had added years to the rest of my infirmities I verily think I should desire to behold unclean sights with spectacles such I mean as you utterly avoid and cause my self to be carried to those lewd places whether alone I were unable to go Insomuch that as there are divers paintings which are necessarily to be clean defaced to take away the defects So I much fear nothing but Death can stay the current of my crimes unless by your means I enter into a second life more fruithfull than the former I therefore speak in good sadness set your whole Clergie to prayer and command a publick Fast in the same strictness as though you were to impetrate at the hands of God the conversion of the great Turk or of the Persian Emperour Propound to your self Monsters in my will to be mastred and an infinity of Enemies to overcome in my passions and after all this you will bear me witness I have not made matters greater then they are and save onely a certain imperfect desire I have to repent and a kinde of small resistance I sometimes make against the beginnings and buddings of vice there is not any difference at all between my self and the greatest sinnet living But take not I beseech you this I write as a mark of my humility for you never read a truer relation and what St. Paul spake in the person of Mankinde accusing himself of other mens offences is my own simple disposition which I deliver into the hands of the Divine Justice I hate my self yet true it is I finde so great coldness in the performance of pious actions that my minde seemeth to be imprisoned when at any time my duty draweth me to Church and when I am there I rather seek diversions and temptations then instruction or edification Even mental prayer being an Oblation for all hours and which may be performed without either burnt Incense or bloudy Sacrifices and the finishing whereof is so near the first motion is to me as laborious as the Pilgrimage of Mount Serrat or of our Lady of Loretta would be to another I am always sad but never penitent I love solitariness but hate austerity I side with honest men but reside with the wicked if at any time some small rays of Devotion reflect upon my crazy conscience they are of so short continuance and so weak as they neither afford me light nor heat so as all this being but accident and meer change doth not any way merit the name of good and it were great wrong to Virtue to rank it in the number of casual occurrents You are therefore necessarily to labour for my conversion which I am unable to effect of my self and that for my part I onely affoord matter whereon to make an honest man If there be certain Saints whom we owe to the tears and intercession of others and if some Martyrs have made their very Executioners Companions of their Glorie I may well hope you will be a powerfull means to save me with your self and that one day happily I may be mentioned among the rest of your Miracles Sir I know your life to be so spotless as though you were incorporeal or never loved any other than that Supream beauty from whence all others are derived Wherefore there is no question but so rare a Virtue may easily impetrate at Gods hands any supplication you shall exhibite nor is there any doubt he hath for you allotted other limits to his bounty save his onely omnipotency You shall yet at the least finde in me Obedience Docility if I have not attained any stronger habitudes You shall have to do with one who amidst

Waves instead of Water and evil Fates for ill fortune or the Flower-de-luce for France to the end to play the Poet in Prose should I immolate my self to publick scorn and sail upon the Ocean in the stormical seasons of the year if I should say the Misericordious Justice of God and his just Misericord or pluck comparisons from Plinie and could I not commend a King without the help of Alexander the Great and Plutarcks Worthies if instead of well-speaking I should translate Tacitus ill and if in spite of him I should force him to deliver his opinion concerning all the affairs of this age you then might rightly blame me from bringing follies so far off and for taking so much pains to make my self ridiculous But surely I should be the most innocent of all others had I onely offended therein and I may safely say without vanity that even the follies of my Infancie were more serious than those sweet Rhetorical flowers when all is said since there is nothing but Religion can force us to believe what she pleaseth and that Kings themselves have no power over Souls I am well satisfied with the affection of my friends and do willingly leave their judgements free to themselves One Good-night is more worth than all our Eloquence and not to know the miseries of this life is to be more learned than the Scorbonists and Jesuits For my part despising the World as I do I cannot much esteem my self who make up one of the sickliest parts thereof and I have so poor an opinion of my own sufficiency as I little esteem the Talents of others Think not then I adore the workmanship of my hands though I take as much pains therein as did the ancient Carvers in counterfeiting their gods But contrariwise it is the reason why I dislike them and had I been a man of ten thousand Crowns rent I would have given the half of it to a Secretary onely to hire him not to indite those Letters you have so much admired The 15. February 1624. The Letters of MONSIEUR de BALZAC To my Lord Cardinal de la Valete from Mounsieur D' BALZAC The second Book LETTER I. My LORD WHilst you imploy your hours in gaining hearts and Votes and happily lay the foundation of some eminent enterprize I here enjoy a reposedness not unlike that of the dead and which is never rouzed but by Clorinda's kisses If the Duke of Ossuna be chosen King of Naples as you write the report runneth I finde no strangeness in it The World is so old and hath seen so much it can hardly spie any new matter nor is there at this day any lawfull Authority whose Origin for the most part hath not been unjust And on the other side the ill success of revolts are far more frequent than are the changes of States and the same action which hath no less than a Diademe for the aim hath often an ignominious death for its end Howsoever this happens it shall not much trouble me since the issue cannot be other than advantagious to this State For God herein will either make it appear that he is protector of Kings or it falling out otherwise yet at least it will weaken the Enemies to this Crown But I hope you will not advise me to beat my brains upon those politick considerations for should I do so it were no less than to retract the resolution I had taken to look upon things passing among us and our neighbours as I do on the History Japon or the affairs of another World I ought to surrender this humour to vulgar spirits who interest themselves in all the quarrels of States and Princes and who will always be parties on purpose to put themselves into choler and be miserable in the misfortunes of others Truely we shall never have done if we will needs take all the affairs of the World to heart and be passionate for the publick whereof we make but a small part It may be at this very instant wherein I write the great Indian Fleet suffereth shipwrack within two leagues of Land happily the great Turk hath surprised some Province from the Christians and taken thence some twenty thousand Souls to convey them to their Cittie of Constantinople It may be the Sea hath exceeded its limits and drowned some Cittie in Zealand If we send for mischiefs so far off there will not an hour pass wherein some disconsolation or other will not come upon us If we hold all the men in the World to be of our affinity let us make account to wear Mournings all our life As mine experience is not great so are my years not many yet since I came into the World I have seen so many strange accidents and have understood from my Father such store of incredible occurrents as I suppose there can nothing now happen able to cause admiration in me The Emperour Charles the fifth his Grand-child born to the hopes of so many Kingdoms was condemned to death for having over-soon desired them The natural subjects of the King of Spain do at this day dispute with him for the Empire of the Sea nor will they rest satisfied with their usurped liberty Surely we should hardly be drawn to believe these things upon the credit of others and those in succeeding ages will with much difficulty be perswaded to receive them for truths yet are these the ordinary recreations of Fortune taking pleasure in deceiving Mankinde by events far opposite to all appearance yea and contrary to their judgements Hath she not delivered over to the peoples fury the man whom she had formerly raised above the rest to the end we should not presume in greatest prosperities And hath she not at the same time taken out of the Bastile a Prisoner to make him General of a Royal Army thereby to oblige us not at any time to despair I do here consider all this with a reposed spirit and as Fables presented on the Stage or Pictures in a Gallery Now since the late Comet had like to have been as fatal unto me as to the Emperour Rodolphus in that my curiosity to see it caused me to rise in my shirt which gave me a cold all the Winter after I am hereafter resolved not to meddle with any thing above my reach but to refer all to GOD and Nature So as Clarinda suffer me to serve her and that I understand from her own mouth that she loves me I will hearken to no other news nor search a second Fortune I therefore most humbly beseech your Lordship to excuse me if upon these occasions lately presented I cannot affoord you my personal attendance or refuse to follow you whither your resolution leads you my Mistress having commanded me to render her an account how I shed my bloud and enjoyning me never to go the Wars but when Muskets are charged with Cypres powder I am rather contented you should accuse me of Cowardize than she justly to charge me

with disobedience And after all this tell me whether or no you think me to be in my right wits and that I have not lost my reason together with the respect I owe you I herein do as a Delinquent who fearing he should not be soon enough punished puts himself into the hands of Justice not staying either for the rack or examination of Judges for the discovery of a crime whereof he was never accused I am well assured that of all passions you have onely those of Honour and Glory that your Spirits are so replenished therewith as there is no place left either for love hate or fear Yet do I withall consider that it is a part of a wise mans felicity to reflect upon other mens follies howsoever if any word hath escaped me which may offend your eys take it I beseech you as a means sent you from GOD for your farther mortification in causing you to read things so distastefull unto you You are necessarily to endure far greater crosses amidst the corruption of this Age if you cannot live among the wicked you must seek for another kinde of World than this and for more perfect creatures than Mortals There will ever be poysnings beyond the Alps Treasons at Court and revolts in this Realm Howsoever my Lord there will be love even in spite of you so long as there are eys and beauties in the World yea the Wise themselves will love if they finde Clorindaes Dianaes and Cassandra's to be beloved Fire seizeth sometimes on Churches and Palaces God hath framed Fools and Phylosophers of one and the same matter And that cruel Sect which seeks to bereave us of the one half of our selves in seeking to free us from our passions and affections instead of making a wise man have onely raised a Statue I must therefore once again tell you that I love since Nature will have it so and that I am of the progeny of our first Parents but I must withall inform you that all my affections spring not from the distempers and diseases of my Soul my inclination to serve you having immortal reason not momentary pleasure for its foundation one day happily I shall no more be amorous but will always remain My Lord Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC To the Lord Cardinal of Valete Son to the Duke of Espernon LETTER II. MY LORD AT length they have done you right and you now enjoy what you deserved from the first day of your Nativity if there could be any thing added to man who reckoneth Kings among his Predecessors and whose inclinations happily are over-great to live under the power of another I should advise you to rejoyce at this news but being extracted as you are from one of the most illustrious Origins on earth and begotten by a Father whose life is loaden with miracles it sufficeth that you pardon Fortune since it hath so happened that present necessity hath gained of her what she in right owed to your name I know well that some will tell you you are created Prince of such an Estate as is bounded neither by Seas nor Mountains and how the extent of your Jurisdiction is so illimitable as were there many Worlds they ought all of them to depend thereon as well as this But I who suffer not mine eys to be dazeled by any other luster than that of Virtue and who do not so much as bestow the looking on what most men admire if I should esteem you either more great or happy than you were I should not have sufficiently profited under you in the true understanding of you Doubtless in the opinion of the Vulgar it is an extraordinary Honour to be a prime person in a Ceremony and to wear a Hat of equal esteem to Crowns and Diadems Yet I presume you will pardon me if I make bold to tell you it is an honour can never oblige a wise man to envy you For had you this point onely above me I should still be my own Master Nor had I for your sake renounced that liberty which was as dear to me as the Common-wealth of Venice Upon the matter to have none other Judge on Earth save onely your reputation and conscience and to have a great train of followers some whereof are imployed in the procuring your spiritual pleasures others in the conduct of your temporal affairs all this shall be still the same with you and divers others whom you slight but to perform good and virtuous actions when you are assured they shall never come to the Worlds eye to fear nothing but dishonest things to believe death to be neither good nor bad in it self but that if the occasion to imbrace it be honourable it is always more valuable than a long life to have the reputation of integrity in your promises in a time when the most credulous have enough to do to confide on publick Faith This is it which I admire in you my Lord and not your red Hat and your fifty thousand Crowns rent yet I will say that for the honour of Rome you ought to esteem of what she sends you The time hath been when she would have erected Statues for you and afforded you sufficient subject to have merited Tryumphs but those days being past and since that Empire is no longer maintained by such means yet ought you to rest satisfied with Honours of Peace and accept as a high favour a Dignity the King of Spaine's Son hath made suite for If there were nothing else in it but that it causeth you to quit your Mourning-robes to revest your self with the colour of Roses you can do no less than rejoyce at such a change Howsoever the nearest objects to your eys will not be so dolefull as formerly they were since there will be nothing upon you which shall not be resplendent and glorious I would willingly dilate this discourse but the speedy departure of the Post will not suffer me and besides I being well assured that if you esteem any thing in my Letters it is not the multitude of words I ought to be contented to end this after my humble suite unto you to love me always since I am passionately My Lord Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC To the Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC I here send you two Letters which were delivered me to be conveyed unto you the one from the Duke of Bavaria the other from the Cardinal of Lerma My Lord you shall thereby perceive that your proposition hath afforded joy both to the Victorious and to the afflicted and that the World receiveth a notable interest therein since it augmenteth the contentment of Triumphs and sweetneth the harshnes of retirement LETTER III. My Lord I Suppose you have understood of the Election of the Pope some two days journies from Paris and that you will make no great haste to add your approbation to a thing already dispatched I had sent a Post on purpose

to advertise you thereof but my Lord Embassadour thought it not fit but hath encharged his own Messenger to advertise you of all things in your Voyage this way and to give you account of all occurrents This makes me think that the subject of your voyage ceasing and the time of year being as yet somewhat troublesome for the undertaking thereof you will rather reserve it for a fitter season when you may perform it with less disorder and more advantagiously for the Kings service My meaning is that I would have you set forward about the end of Autumne that you may spend here with us one of these warm and springing Winters laden with Roses wholy reserved for our admirable Italic And my Lord though herein the consideration of my private interest may seem to make me speak thus rather than my affection to your service yet would I willingly tell you that all kinde of contentments attend you here and if your great Spirit aspire to glorious things for the keeping it in action it shall infallibly finde them at Rome In the interim how short a while soever you stay here you shall have the contentment to see France change some five or six times At your return you will hardly finde any thing answerable to what you left there they shall not be the same men you formerly saw and all things will appear unto you as the affairs of another Kingdom But before the matter be grown to that head it is fitting you reign here in Sovereigntie and become the Supream Judge of three or four Conclaves And truly it might so happen my Lord that I should do you some acceptable service in those great occasions if I had my health but to my great grief it is a happiness for which I envy my Grand-mother and howsoever I have heretofore been little or much estimable I confess that at this present I am but the half of what I was It is therefore in vain to expect works of any great value from me or that you importune me to take pains for the Publick for in Conscience what high designs can a man have between the affliction of diseases and the apprehension of Death The one whereof doth never forsake me and the other dayly affrights me or how can you imagine I should conceive eminent matters who am ready to die at every instant True it is that the necessity to obey you which I have always before mine eys is an extraordinary strong motive but not to dissemble the impossibility of my performance is yet more forcible and so long as I continue in the state I now am I cannot promise you so much as the History of the Kingdom of Yuelot nor that of the Papacie of Campora though it continued onely one half quarter of an hour From Rome this 27. of February 1622. Another Letter unto Cardinal de la Valette from BALZAC LETTER IV. My Lord YOur Cash-keeper hath newly brought me the sum you commanded him to deliver unto me I would willingly shew sufficient thankfulness for this high favour but besides that your benefits are boundless and that you are so gracious an obliger that it doth even augment the value of your bounty I should seem over-presumptuous to think any words of mine valuable to the least of your actions It shall therefore suffice me to protest unto you that the bounty wherewith the Letter I received from you is so stored being of force to infuse Love and Fidelity in the hearts of very Barbarians shall work no less effect in the spirit of a person who hath learned both by Nature and Philosophy not to be ingratefull Since I finde my interest within my duty I must necessarily love you if I hate not my self and be an honest man by the very Maxim of the wicked Yet is not this last consideration the cause chiefly obliging me to your service For though I acknowledge divers defects in my self yet may I without vanity affirm I was never besotted with so base an attraction as that of gain I therefore reflect upon your favours in their naked purity and the esteem you make of me is to me by so much a more strong obligation than all others in that it regardeth my merit and not my instant poverty and proceedeth from your judgement which is far more excellent then your fortunes are eminent Herein my Lord it is manifest that all your inclinations are magnificent for you knowing me neither to be fit to make the Father of a Family nor to solicite causes at the Councel-table nor well to ride post you make it appear you are of the right bloud of Kings who are onely rich in superfluous things Truely it were a hard matter to guess what in this World is the true use of Pearls and Diamonds or why a Picture should cost more than a Palace but onely pleasure which to satisfie the inventions of Art are dayly imployed and nature to that end produceth whatsoever is rare being indeed a thing more noble than necessiy she being contented with small matters ever preferring profit before pleasure And I will here stop lest I speak too much to my own advantage And if I have already incurred that crime I beseech you to believe it hath not been with purpose to praise my self but onely to extoll your liberality Yet will I make bold to acquaint you how I imploy your money and yield you a more particular account of the affairs I dispatch for you here at Rome First in this hot Moneth I seek all possible remedies against the violence of the Sun I have a Fan which wearieth the hands of four Grooms and raiseth a winde in my Chamber which would cause shipwrack in the main Sea I never die but I die Snow in the Wine of Naples and make it melt under Mellons I spend half my time under water and the rest on Land I rise twice a day and when I step out of my bed it is onely to enter into a Grove of Orange-trees where I slumber with the pleasant purling of some twelve Fountains but if occasion be offered to go further once in a week I cross not the street but in a Carroach passing still in the shade between Heaven and Earth I leave the smell of sweetest flowers unto the Vulgar as having found the invention to eat and drink them The Spring time never parts with me all the year either in variety of distilled waters or in Conserves I change perfumes according to the diversity of seasons some I have sweeter others stronger And though the Air be a thing Nature bestows for nothing and whereof the poorest have plenty yet that I breath in my Chamber is as costly unto me as my house-rent Besides all this I in quality of my Lord your Agent am almost dayly feasted and there whilest others fill themselves with substantial and most ponderous cates I who have no great appetite make choice of such Birds as are crammed with Sugar and

nourish my self with the spirit of Fruits and with a meat called jelly My Lord these are all the services I yield you in this place and all the functions of my residence near his holiness and I hold my self particularly obliged now the second time to thank you for this favour for by your means I injoy two things seldom suiting together a Master and Liberty and the great rest you allow me is not the least present you please out of your Nobleness to affoord me Your Graces most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome 15. of July 1621. To the Lord Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC LETTER V. My Lord WIthin the Deserts of Arabia nor in the Seas intrails was there ever so furious a Monster found as is the Sciatica And if Tyrants whose memories are hatefull unto us had been stored with such instruments for effecting their cruelties surely I think it had been the Sciatica the Martyres had indured for Religion and not the fire and biting of wilde beasts At every sting it carries a poor sick person even to the borders of the other World and causeth him sensible to touch the extremities of life And surely to support it long a greater remedy than Patience is no less than requisite and other forces than those of man In the end GOD hath sent me some ease after the receit of an infinite of remedies some whereof sharpned my grief and the rest asswaged it not But the violence of my pain being now past I begin to injoy such rest as weariness and weakness affoordeth to over-tired bodies And though I be in a state of health far less perfect than those who are found yet measuring it by the proximity of the misery I have indured and the comparison of those pains I have suffered I am right glad of my present Fortune nor am I so hardy to dare as yet complain of my great weakness remaining To speak truth I have no better legs than will serve to make a shew and should I undertake to walk the length of my Chamber my trouble would be no less than if I were to pass the Mountains and cross all Rivers I encounter But to the end to change Discourse and to let you see things in their fair shape you are to understand that in this plight wherein I stand being sufficient to cause you to pitty me four hundred leagues off I am on the one side become so valiant as not to fly though I were pursued by a whole Army and on the other so stately that if the Pope should come to visite me I would not conduct him so far as the Gates This is the advantage I draw from my bad legs and the remedies arising in my bed wherewith I indeavour to comfort my self without the help of Physicks You will I fear say I might well have forborn to entertain you with these impertinencies nor am I ignorant that perfect felicities such as yours desire not to be disquieted either by the complaints of the distressed or by the consideration of distastefull things But it is likewise true that the first loss we indure in pain falls upon our judgement and the body hath such a proximity with the Soul that the miseries of the one do easily slide into the other But what reason soever I have to defend my evil humour yet must it necessarily give way to your contentment and of the two passions wherewith I am assaulted obey the stronger I will therefore be no longer sad but for others and will hold it fit I make you laugh upon the subject of XXXXX to whom you lately addressed your Letters You may please to remember one of their names to be A. the other B yet it is not sufficient onely to know so much but I must likewise inform you somewhat of their shape and stature The first I speak of is so gross as I verily think he will instantly die of an Apoplexie and the other so little as I would swear that since he came into the World he never grew but at the hairs end afore any indifferent Judges an Ape would sooner pass for a man than this Pigmy nor will I believe he was made after the image of God left therein I should wrong so excellent a Nature Besides it were an easier task to raise the dead than to make this mans teeth white he hath a Nose at enmity with all others and against which there is no possible defence but Spanish Gloves What can I say more there is no part of his body that is not shamefull or wherein Nature hath not been defective Yet notwithstanding one of the fairest Princesses of Italie is by a solemn contract condemned to lodge night by night with this Monster When you chance to see this man together with the other great bellied beast who stuffs a whole Carroach you will presently suppose God never made them to be Princes and that it is not onely as much as to abuse the obedience of free persons but even to wrong the meanest Grooms to give them Masters of this stamp Now though the party you wot of do in some sort represent the latter person yet is there still some small difference between his actions and the others The great VVV is newly parted from this Court where he hath not received from his Holiness his expected contentment His design was to break the Marriage his Brother hath contracted upon some slight appearance of Sorcery wherewith he deemed to dazle the Worlds eye and ground the nullity of an action which was by so much the more free in that the parties who perform'd it sought not the consent of any to approve it In conclusion after the loss of much time and many words he is gone without obtaining any thing save onely the Popes benediction and as for me I remain much satisfied to see Justice so exact at Rome that they will not condemn the Devil himself wrongfully I have heard how in some places half hour Marriages are made the conditions whereof are neither digested into writing nor any memorie thereof reserved but of these secret mysteries there are no other witnesses save onely the Night and Silence And though the Court of Rome approveth them not yet doth she shut her eys fearing to see them I am resolved not to be long in the description of K.K.K. whom you know much better than my self Yet thus much I will say that since Neroes death there never appeared in Italie a Comedian of more honourable extraction And surely to make the Company at this present in France compleat his personage were sufficient He makes Verses he hath read Aristotle and understands Musick and in a word he hath all the excellent qualities unnecessary in a Prince I know here a German called S. to whom he giveth an annual pension of a thousand Crowns assigned unto him upon an Abbey during life this he hath done not that he intendeth to use his service in his counsel

or with purpose to imploy him in any important negotiation for the good of his affairs his onely ambition is to have him make a book whereby it might appear how those of M M M. are lineally descended from Julius Caesar I should be glad he would yet aim at some higher or more eminent race and that he would purchase a second fable at the like rate he payed for the first I would willingly give him his choice of the Medes Persians Greeks or Troians which of these he would have of his Kindred and without the relying upon the Authority of tradition or testimonie of Stories I would draw his descent from Hector or Achilles which he best liked There are certain Princes who are necessarily to be deceived if you mean to do them acceptable service being far better pleased to be entertained with a plausible lie than to be advertised of an important truth I hold my self right happy you are not of this humour for whatsoever I say I suppose it would be very hard for me to be of a fools minde though he were a Monarch I intend not to steal your favours but to purchase them legally and having ever believed flattery to be as mischievous a means to gain affection as charms and sorcery I cannot speak against my conscience and were not this true I tell you I would not assure you that I am Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome this 10. of December 1622. To the Lord Cardinal de Valette from BALZAC Letter VI. My Lord HOw great soever the subject of my sorrows be yet do I finde in your Letters sufficient to make me happy in my hard fortune The last I received hath so much obliged me that but for the displeasing news coming unto me which tempered my joy my reason had not been of sufficient force to moderate it But at this time the death of my poor Brother being incessantly before mine eys taketh from me the taste of all good tidings and the prosperity even of the Kings affairs seem displeasing unto me finding my self to bear upon me the mournings of his Victorie Yet since in this fatal agitation of Europe it is not I alone who bewail some loss and since your self have not been able to preserve all that was dear unto you I should seem very uncivil if I presumed to prefer my private interest before yours or reflect upon my particular affliction having one common with yours It is long since I have not measured either the felicities or fatalities of this World but by your contentments or discomforts and that I behold you as the whole workmanship God hath made Wherefore my Lord I willl lay aside whatsoever concerns my self to enter into your resentments and to tell you since you cannot make unworthy elections it must needs be that in death of your Friends you can suffer no small losses Notwithstanding as you transcend sublunary things and in that all men draw examples out of the meanest actions of your life I assure my self they have acknowledged upon this occasion that there is not any accident to surmount against which you have use of all your virtue Afflictions are the gifts of God though they be not of those we desire in our prayers and supposing you should not approve this proposition yet have you at all times so little regarded death as I cannot believe you will bewail any for being in a condition your self esteems not miserable My Lord it sufficeth you conserve the memory of those you have loved in consequence of the protestation you pleased to make unto me by your Letter And truly if the dead be any thing as none can doubt they cannot grieve for ought in this World wherein they still injoy your favours In the mean time I take this to my self and am most happy in having conferred my dutifull affections upon a man who setteth so high a value upon those things he hath lost For any thing my Lord I perceive there is small difference between good works and the services we offer you they having their rewards both in this life and the other your goodness being illimitable as is the desire I have to tell you I am Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Rome the 29. of Decemb. 1621. To the Lord Bishop of Valette from BALZAC LETTER VII MY LORD THough I be not in state either to perform any great exploit upon the person of any man nor have any great force to defend my self yet cannot I touch upon the Count Mansfield without taking it to heart and joyning my good affections to the Kings forces If this were the first time the Germans had exceeded their limits and sent their Armies to be overthrown in France the novelty of these Barbarous faces and of those great lubberly swat-rutters might easily have affrighted us But upon the matter we have to do with known enemies and who will suffer us to take so sufficient advantages over them besides those we naturally injoy as without being forced to make use of Arms we may defeat them onely by their own evil conduct I do not wonder there are men who willingly forsake Frost and Snow to seek their living under a more pleasing and temperate climate than their own and who quit bad Countreys as being well assured the place of their banishment shall be more blissefull unto them than that of their birth Onely herein it vexeth me in the behalf of the Kings honour to see him constrained to finish the remainder of the Emperours victories upon a sort of beaten Souldiers and who rather fly the fury of Marques Spinola than follow us These great Bulwarks whose neighbour I am seeming rather the Fabricks of Gyants than the fortifications of a Garrison-Town will not ever be looked upon with amazement one day I hope there will appear nothing in their places but Cabbins for poor Fishermen or if it be requisite the works of Rebellion should still remain and the memory of these troublesome people indure yet longer we shall in the upshot see them remove Mountains and dive into the Earths foundations to provide themselves a Prison at their own charge But withall my Lord I beseech you let there be no further speech made of occasions or expeditions and let a Peace be concluded which may continue till the Worlds end let us leave the War to the Turk and King of Persia and cause I beseech you that we may lose the memorie of these miserable times wherein Fathers succeed their Children and wherein France is more the Countrey of Lans ●●ghts and Swisses than ours Though Peace did not turn the very Desarrs into profitable dwellings as it doth or caused not the quarries or flints to become fruitfull though it came unaccompanied without being seconded with security and plenty yet were it necessary onely to refresh our forces thereby to enable us the longer to endure War As I was ending this last word I heard

suspicious of those felicities I fear I shall not be able to enjoy with you yet whatsoever I say I am not so far in love with my self as to prefer my private content before the general desires of all men and the Churches necessities It is requisite for infinite considerations of importance you should be present at the first Conclave and that you appear at a War not therefore less considerable in being composed of disarmed persons or for that it makes no Widowes nor Orphans I am certain you have elsewhere seen more dangerous encounters and have often desired more bloudy Victories But how great soever the object of your ambition be yet can it not conceive any thing of such Eminency as at once to give a Successour to Consuls to Emperours and Apostles and to make with your breath the man who over-toppeth Kings and who commandeth overall reasonable Souls Though my health be so uncertain as I cannot promise my self three days continuance thereof yet have I not lost all hope to see you one day in this Countrey the prescriber of Laws to inferiours and of examples to Commanders My Lord it may be God reserveth me for your sake that nothing be wanting to your glorie and to the end there might be yet one man in the World able to affoord you the praises proper to your merits My Lord Your most humble and most faithfull Servant BALZAC The 29. of June 1623. To my Lord Cardinal de Valette LETTER X. My Lord IT must necessarily be the greatest affair at this present in agitation on Earth that could oblige you to leave Paris nor had you parted thence upon any slighter condition than to make a head for all Christendom If you arrive there opportunely to have your part in this great Election and that the Conclave attend your Presence on purpose to afford a more full Reputation and Authority to what shall there be resolved upon I do no way doubt but you will maintain the same advantage over the Italian wits as you have obtained over ours or that their policies will not be as impertinent in your Presence as the Charmes of Magicians are frivolous being confronted with Divine matters You have sufficient of their patience to put off affairs when occasion is offered but you have a courage they come short of to carry matters by strong hand if necessity require Therefore my Lord to what part soever your opinion shall incline you will carry that with you which gaineth victories and causeth the greater party to side with the founder yea if matters should pass without contestation yet should you at least take notice that you are intreated to that action wherein God permits you to supply his place and intrusteth to your care the most important matter of all his works To speak seriously his providence is never in so high imployment as when he is to choose the man who hath power to use well or abuse all the Riches of Heaven and who is to exercise a power nearest approaching to Divinity Heretofore God made use of Thunder and Tempests when he purposed to denounce any thing to men declaring his Will by other than ordinary means But since he hath caused Oracles to cease and suffereth the Thunder to work onely natural effects It is onely by the voyce of Cardinals he causeth his desires to be manifested and ordaineth concerning the Worlds Conduct When you please my good Lord I shall have some notice of these inspirations he hath sent you and of the election you have made For to force me so soon to inform my self thereof in the place where it was performed this Kingdom had need be over hot for me and that I were not so well acquainted as I am with the Sun at Rome That which blacks the Moors and burns Lybia is not so dangerous at this Season and were you not stored with treasures of Snow and provided of Halls of Marble to desend you from the scorching Air I should as soon chuse to be condemned to the fire as to be forced to reside where you are at this present But your Grace I know can not be affrighted with all these apprehensions of heat you are none of those who will finde fault with the Air which all that ancient Republick breathed or with the Sun which hath holpen to make so many Conquerours and given light to so many glorious Triumphs Yet for my part I who have none of these considerations and who have wholy put my self into the power of Physick it is requisite I avoid the very shadow of danger and live with as great apprehension of fear in this World as though I were in an Enemies Countrey or in a Forrest of wilde beasts It is therefore out of pure necessity I attend your commands in this place and a more seasonable time to testifie unto you without running the hazard of my life that I am with all my Soul My Lord Your most humble and most obedient Servant BALZAC The 2. of AuAugust 1623. To the Lord Cardinal de Valete from BALZAC LETTER XI My Lord I Verily believed I could never have been so unfortunate as to be forced to search in the Gazettes for what you do and to hear no other news from you then what common brute bestoweth in all parts of the World and which the English and Germans may as well know as I. This punishment is by so much the more wounding in that I have heretofore been enriched with those benefits whereof you now seem to bereave me and in that the time was when you pleased so far to discend from the rank whence you are derived as to lay aside all those lusters which incompass you to converse freely with me But my Lord since one word of your mouth hath often cured my decayed spirits hath many times made me happy without the help of Fortune I freely confess unto you I cannot resolve to change condition as knowing the loss of the least of your favours cannot be little Yet being so innocent that I can no way imagine my offence and not acknowledging among men other more assured verity then your word I have a great reluctation to be diffident of a thing upon the certainty whereof half the Court is ingaged for War and the besieged would make small difficulty to surrender themselves My Lord you have pleased to promise you would love me always therefore I beseech you not to be offended if I put you in minde that as the ancient Gods of the Countrey where now you are submitted themselves to Destinies after they had once assigned them So you though above all other Laws are yet subject to your word I am confident it cannot be revoked so long as the order of sublunary things change not and the Decrees of Gods providence remain immoveable and if you repent any one action in your whole life you therein do more then your very Enemies who never as yet called the least of them in question

as weary of my discourse as of a tedious Preacher I would dilate my self upon this Subject but I know the affairs in these parts are very indifferent unto you I will therefore refer the further relation wherewith I intended to acquaint you to my Lord the Marques of Caeuvre In brief there are none but himself and the Councel who can cause the Pope to incline to our reasonable demands and I will tell you without flattering him that so long as he is here the King may glorie that he reigneth at Rome As for other things what beautifull objects soever Rome presenteth to my view and what pleasure soever each man findes there conformable to his humour and inclination yet cannot I receive any being so remote from persons so dear unto me and shall esteem my self unhappy so long as I am necessitated to write Letters unto you and onely say what is not as yet in my power to cause to appear that I am Mounsieur Your most faithfull servant BALZAC To Mounsieur de Montigny from BALZAC LETTER XIV SIR THough you use me ill and that I have reason to be sensible of your neglects yet I am resolved to suffer from you with an obstinate patience and to acquire your favours by force since I cannot obtain them otherwise But I am assured you are not so uncivil as not to suffer your self to be beloved nor so tied to your own fancies as that there remaineth no affection in you for whatsoever is separate Otherwise I should think your humour were as much changed as are the affairs of France or that you were suddenly become quite another man I will therefore rest confident in the opinion most pleasing unto me and imagine you are sufficiently my friend in your thoughts but that you are over loyal a French man to have any intelligence out of the Kingdom It may be the example of the Duke of Biron affrights you and that you take all such as are in Italic for Don Pedros or Countes of Fuentes in this case in truth you have reason and it is far better to write no Letters at all then to be forced to explain them before the Cour● of Parliament But if you were of my humour and that you would refer the whole State and all the affairs therein to Mounsieur Lumes me thinks our Amity could not pass for conspiracy and you might safely let me have news from your self and the rest of our friends without any hazard at all I desire onely to know what you do and wherein you imploy the fairest season of your life Do you never part from the lips of Opala whose breath is so sweet as it seems she seedeth onely on Pinks and Perfumes are you in as high esteem in your Mistresses thoughts as your merits and service deserves and as your loyalty obligeth her unto Is Clitorhon still in his generous musings doth he daily take Towns at Table and doth he yet frame forreign designs between his Bed-curtains Is there any good inclination in the Court for our great Cardinal and are they not perswaded that if he were Pope the Church would soon be as well Mistress in Germany as at Rome After you have satisfied me in all these points I am contented to be at truce with you as long as you please and if need be will suffer you to wax old upon the bosom of Opala without ever asking you what you do there Yours BALZAC BALZAC his Letter to the Duke of Espernon LETTER XV. My Lord WEre I not born as I am your most humble servant yet should I shew my self a very degenerate French-man if I did not much rejoyce in the happiness of your Family since it is a publick Felicity I have heard the prosperous success of the voyage you made into Beam and of the great beginnings you have given to what the King desireth there to undertake And truly the Election he hath made of you to serve him in an occasion of such importance hath been so generally approved that if heretofore there hath been any defects pretended in the conduct of our Affairs we must necessarily avow that this last Action hath sufficiently justified all the former it appearing plainly that it is not onely favour which setteth the difference between men I no way doubt but right and power sideing together that the event of things will be suitable to our desires But howsoever it happen you have already the glorie of having facilitated the victorie and made it appear how the Enemies of the State have no other force but what they draw out of our weakness It is now time my Lord you take notice of those advantages God hath given you above the rest of men You ought at least to remember how being tried with worldly affairs and retired from Court publick necessity had not sought you out in your private reposedness at home to put the Kings royal Armies into your hands if you were not the onely man from whom all men expect the re-establishment of these affairs I will not so far rely upon my own opinion as to answer for the future Yet when I consider the actions of your life which are so eminent that we finde difficulty to believe them even after they have been performed and those in such number that stranger may well imagine you have lived from the very beginning of our Monarchy I suppose I might boldly affirm that if there be yet any great matter remaining to be atchieved in the World there is none but your self must attempt it You have possessed the favour of Kings as Fortunes which might fail you and have not feared that their passions could out-last your innocencie This virtue we so much admire hath succeeded the same authority our Fathers have adored You have made no use of your power in State which you have not ever since conserved by the force of your courage You have at all times preserved the liberty of France amidst the miseries of times and the usurpation upon lawfull power Who is there can say this of himself where are they that have stood firm between rebellion and servitude where was there ever known an old age so necessary for the World or so much good and bad Fortune equally glorious My Lord you know your self too well to suspect me of flattery and my humour is so aliene from any servile actions as the Court hath not sufficient hopes to cause me to do any thing against my conscience I then speak as I do now for the onely interest of virtue and if that were not on your side I would seek for it among our enemies to do it right None will suspect I have any pretentions at Madrill or that I intend to make a Furtune in Holland yet to hear me speak of the Prince of Orenge and the Marquess Spinola one would say that I did at once expect Abbies from the Hollanders and were a pensioner to Spain In sum I hold my self obliged to those who

affoord me matter and means to reconcile the two rarest things in this world to wit virtue and eloquence And as their reputation hath need of my Pen to make it immortal so are their lives and actions right usefull unto me when I imploy my pains on excellent subjects You have ever done me the honour to wish me well and I have received innumerable favours from my Lord the Cardinal your Son but howsoever I humbly beseech you to be confident that my affections are absolutely pure and that my particular interests have not any alliance therewith I am so happy as to have served you in a troublesome time and to have been of the weaker side as judging it to be the more honest I have not since been of another minde and the reasons drawing me to do what I did being still the same I am really as I ever have been My Lord Your most humble and thrice obedient servant BALZAC To the Duke of Espernon from BALZAC LETTER XVI My Lord THe Letter I lately received from you maketh me know I am happier then I supposed since I have the honour to be sometimes in your memory It is a place so taken up with high thoughts and which the publick good doth in such measure make use of as I had not the ambition to imagine there could be any room left for a man of so small importance as my self But I see that as you never had any so potent enemies as to exceed your courage so have you not any servants of so slight consideration whom you esteem not worthy your care Herein my Lord you make it appear that the meanest matters change their nature into more noble subjects so soon as they become yours and how of all men you have conquered part and acquired the rest I am verily perswaded it were no less then to offend God to deny obedience to a person so high in his favour as you are and that his meaning is this commanding spirit he hath conferred upon you should be master of all others The honour therefore to you appertaining being little inferiour to what we owe to sacred things and that besides the ordinary providence which governeth the World there being a particular one in Heaven designed meerly for the conduct of your life to make it admired in all after ages it is neccessary as well in contemplation of this common consideration as for others particularly concerning myself I should perpetually remain My Lord Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 5. of April 1622. To the Duke of Espernon from BALZAC LETTER XVII My LORD IN this general calm of the State wherein the affairs of this Kingdom seem to be asleep and the Worlds occurrents to be at a stand all France expects your presence at Court to be the Authour of the desired news and to draw from the Kings breast the good intentions wherewith it is so richly stored The reduction of Beam not stained with any drop of bloud the truth wherein you have instructed all men concerning the possibility of taking Rochel and the order you have now lately left in Guiene where you have reduced the Factions to such a point as their onely power consisteth in their perverse humours putteth us in hope that if God should defer the safety of our State till another age it could be no man your self excepted for whom he hath reserved so glorious enterprise My Lord it is certain he never shewed more miracles in those places himself hath consecrated to his glory and publick piety and which he hath chosen on purpose there to manifest his power then he hath done in your person And when I consider how often he hath protected you contrary to all humane appearance and the opposition you have encountred in arriving to this height by so many rocks and precipices I cannot but constantly believe you have over-passed the time of dying and that for the Worlds general good it is fitting you indure as long as the Sun or Stars To stop here were to praise you imperfectly and onely to make it appear you are able to affoard long services I will therefore say more on which side soever I turn mine eys be it that I convey them beyond the Seas or make them pass those mountains which separate us from our Neighbours I finde not that person in any place who can justly dispute for glorie with you or whose life is so illustrious as yours I have seriously considered all whatsoever might give value or reputation to the Courts of stranger Princes and there truely I finde men who are well seen in Military affairs and who have gained to themselves no small experience by means of an infinity of rules and maximes But the difference between those men and your self is that they cannot stir nor make themselves awfull without the Indies Armies and Cannons whereas you are redoubtable all alone and unarmed yea your very stilness terrifieth the greatest enemies of France This being absolutely true as no man can doubt it is high time the King do really make use of a man whom the necessity of his state requireth of him and that he no longer imploy those improsperous persons under whose hands opportunities wax old and his good fortune will fail him It is sufficient that the Rhine and Alpes have formerly been French and that our language is spoken in neighbouring Provinces without suffering a strange kinde of people still to remain in the very bowels of our Kingdom who will not allow of our ancient Laws There is now no longer means to cover this skar which dishonoreth the face of State or to suffer that Rebellion Loyalty live together To speak truth what kinde correspondency can be expected between the Mistress of the house and the Concubine what a monstrous production would that prove between a Monarchy and a popular government and what kinde of Soveraign should he be who were dependent on his subjects and his Councel subordinate to the Town-house Truly if Catholicks should demand Cities of the King proportionable to their number as others do he should be forced hence-forward to remain all his life time at Fountain-bleau and S. Germins nor would there remain unto him any more then the bare title of a King and the common fields of his Countrey But it shall not always be so if predictions prove true And reason as well as nature requireth that things should be reduced to their ancient form It were no less then to injure him who hath promised to France a longer continuance then to all her diseases to think that he having given remedies against the Gothes and Moors he will suffer it to die at this day by the hands of a small pack of Rebels Provided that face which I rather call immortal then ancient do still assure us of the great source of life you retain in your couragious heart and that heaven please to preserve for the Worlds benefit the blessing it conferred upon us

that all the miseries which befell your Majesty in your minority have been begun upon the like occasions I therefore using my best indeavours if the intentions of those of Rochel be good to hinder that the events be not evil therein I hope I shall no way disobey you Majesties commands but do rather explain them according to the true sense allowing them the best interpretation since it is most profitable for your service Truely Sir no man is ignorant that as the conservation of your Authority is the principle Law of your State so likewise that the most express and important part of your commands is the good of your affairs This being undoubtedly true what appearance is there it being in my power to preserve the affections of a divided Province in due obedience to your Majesty and to pacifie by my presence those affections easily drawn to revolt if none did confirm them in their loyalty I should for the interrupting so necessary a voyage propound to my self so frivolous considerations and those so far fetcht as the Wars of Bohemia I live not in an age Sir wherein I am permitted to feed my self with vanity but I do not withall suppose your Majesty doth so slightly esteem of my service as not to make any farther use of me save onely to see the packets from Germany safely conveyed nor do I finde my self so un-usefull as to be forced instead of better imployments onely to let you know what news is stirring and to give you an account of ordinarie rumours I must humbly beseech your Majesty to suffer me to die in this opinion I have of my self and to allow me to make free use of my leasure if you please not to impose more honourable imployments upon me for your service Howsoever it happen Sir or how badly soever I be intreated I am determined to continue resolute in well-doing And your Majesty may be most assured that neither Time which affoordeth occasions to the most miserable to raise their fortunes nor Place often favouring their resentments nor Necessity which causeth their actions to seem just shall ever transport me from remaining with the same affection I ever have done to be Sir Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull subject and servant Espernon From Pont de Vichij the 7. of Feb. 1619. Another Letter from the Duke of Espernon to the French King penned by the same BALZAC LETTER XX. SIR IF your Majesty have misconceived mine intentions before you were clearly informed of them I am perswaded I have at this present in such sort justified the same by my proceedings as there is no further need to defend them by my words Truely I may justly say that the Conduct I have used hath been such the Queen your Mother having done me the honour to make use of my service in a business she deemed much to import the good of your State as not making use of the advantages which might arise by causing mischief to continue or by giving way to such designs the event whereof would have sufficiently commended the resolution had they not been disadvantagious unto you I have contented my self to testifie to all France that I had respect to your Authority even in the hands of mine enemies whereby Sir I trust I have caused my actions to appear so pure and unspotted before your Majestie that you remain fully satisfied nor will you I hope judge I have erred in following a cause I might probably suppose could not be well separated from yours Now therefore since it hath pleased your Majestie to supply what seemed deficient in the felicitie of your Reign and to settle peace in your State All your true subjects Sir are by so much the more obliged to rely on your Royal word in that it is the Rock whereon all Christendom rests confident And the same having been given to the Queen your Mother besides your obligation thereto by God and Nature your very reputation confirmeth the same unto her upon this sacred and inviolable assurance after having dedicated my sensibilities and interests to publick peace and taken your Majesties memorie as witness that I have at all times served you faithfully though it hath not always been by ordinarie and common ways I assure my self you will be pleased to permit me hence forward to pass the rest of my days in peace and now at length to leave me in the Haven whereinto I have been cast by so many violent Tempests Sir I have but a short time to stay in this World and surely I should suppose my life over-long could I finde my self culpable of one single cogitation repugnant to the Allegeance I owe to your Majestie I therefore most humbly beseech you Sir to be pleased to consider that I desiring no other thing of you but either some small repose after my great pains or an honourable death in your service I can no way herein allot more moderate limits to my ambition nor wish a more innocent end to my old age Howsoever I shall esteem it right happy may I end it in this sort and if in loosing it I conserve the qualitie I have ever hitherto inviolably kept of Your Majesties most humble most obedient and most faithfull subject and servant ESPERNON From Angoulosme the 10. of June 1619. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC The third Book To my Lord the Duke de la Valete from Mounsieur De BALZAC LETTER I. My LORD IN acquittance of my promise when I parted from Mets I am to let your Lordship know we are at this instant beyond ten Rivers and how all things have been propitious to my Lord your Fathers voyage To be diffident the conclusion will not correspond to these fair beginnings were either to make doubt of Gods providence or to distrust his grace but it hath pleased his Divine Majesty at all times to take so particular care for the conservation of your Familie that he will as soon permit his Altars and images to be irreverently intreated as persons who are so high in his favour as all of you are Howsoever it happen my Lord if none but the prosperous can lose by alterations you will I hope confess no such change can any way happen whereout we shall not draw some advantage and what interpretations soever they give to my Lord your Fathers intentions yet will all honest men judge favourably thereof nor will any man apprehend failing after so eminent an example All France attends his resolution to be rightly informed in the truth of the Kings affairs and all men know he is of such consideration in this State as his least discontentments are to be reckoned among publick miseries I will perswade my self they will not proceed to any extreamity and that there is not impudency enough in our Enemies to transport them to so dangerous counsels If the worst come yet must this voyage necessarily produce the one of two things equally necessary in a troublesome time War or

must affirm you shall seem over much to neglect your own quiet if you let slip to favourable an occasion to procure it It is time Clorinda you make it appear what you are and that we begin the Historie of our adventures If you love all things will be easie for you there is no more difficulty to passe the Alpes then to go up into your Chamber Nor doubt you that the Sea-waters will become sweet if you be not satisfied in that they be smooth But I am much affraid I shall not receive from you the satisfaction I expect You will tell me as you use we must let Nature work and that she will soon revenge us of our enemies I suppose Clorinda all this may happen but it is no reason we should be obliged to the Tyrants death for our liberty but to our own resolutions The 30. of July 1620. BALZAC To Lydia from BALZAC LETTER XXII I Am almost mad to understand thou were seen laugh to day Is this true love Lydia to be merry in my absence and to be the same woman thou art when I am with thee Yet should I have been satisfied hadst thou been contented onely to have made thy self merry with thy looking-glass so the man in iron had not been in my place I never saw him but once and surely he is either a Sor or else all the rules of Physiognomy are false yet because he calls himself Captain thou permits him to persecute thee with his complements and art at the point to yield If he touch thee Lydia all the water in the Sea is little enough to purifie thee and if thou allowest him the rest have a care least in his sleep he take thee for an Enemy and instead of his imbraces strangle thee To the Baron of Amblovile from BALZAC LETTER XXIII My Lord I Attend you here in the season of Jasmins and Roses and do send you a taste of the pleasures of Rome for fear you be poysoned therewith upon your first approach We are here in the Countrey of curiosities and to be happy in this place it sufficeth not to be blinde The Sun hath yet heat enough to ripen us Reasins and to affoard us Flowers all the Winter falls upon the neighbouring Mountains to the end we may not want Snow in August But if you desire I should divert my discourse unto more serious matters and conceal nothing from you I must tell you there is no place under Heaven where Virtue is so near a Neighbour to Vice or where good is so mingled with Evil We here behold miracles on the one side and monsters on the other and at the same time when some Discipline themselves others run to debauches of all kindes Besides there is as profound a peace here as in that part of the Air elevated above the Windes and Storms Idleness in this place is an honest mans ordinary vocation and to save half the World no man will rise hastily from Table for fear of troubling digestion If you chance to see any with skars in their faces do not thereupon imagine they have purchased them either in Wars or in defence of their honour for these are onely their Mistresses favours but in recompence of such refractory humours you shall see that here the sanctity whereof doth illustrate the whole Church It is their fervent prayers which impetrate all advantages over Enemies It is their fastings which cause fruitfulness to flow upon the Earth It is their innocency which conserveth the culpable from Eternal ruin In a word there are here such excellent examples of Virtue and so intising allurements to Vice that I will not marvel if you turn honest man here and I will likewise willingly pardon you if you do not so Truly as new Spain is the Province of Gold and as Affrick affoards Lions and France Souldiers so is Italy the mother of those things you best love When you shall see these Female Creatures in their own Countrey and compare their beauty with the bad fashion of the masculine Italians I doubt not but it will seem to you as well as to my self these Divine Women to have been created by themselves or to be Queens who have married their Grooms The most part of those beyond the Mounts have no more beauty then needs must to excuse them from being esteemed ugly and if there be some one whose face you could fancy this shall happily be some desolate Palace or some well favoured beast But here for the most part they are born Eloquent and I will tell you before hand that in one and the same person you shall finde both your Master and Mistress For my part I ingeniously confess I do no longer live under Clorinda's regency and all that is permitted me in this place is onely sometimes to honour her memory I expect you should at this passage accuse me of levity and disloyalty and that you could willingly revile me But do you not think my sighs must needs be surbated in going every day four hundred leagues Besides being so far from her as I am what know I whether I love a dead body or an Infidel I have not received any favours from her which are not rather marks of her virtues then demonstrations of her love And had she lost all her liberality in that kinde she could hardly miss it I am therefore onely obliged to my word not to her affection And as for that I should over-esteem her if I made more reckoning thereof then some Princes do of theirs and I should shew my self over superstitious if I valued what I onely whispered in her ear to be of greater efficacie then Letters Pattents and Edicts It is a point decided in Ovids Theology that an hundred false Oaths from an amorous person amount not to half a deadly sin and that it is onely the God of Poets whom we offend by our perjury in that point Now I will be judged by her self whether I having bestowed my service upon her she should take it ill if another did reward me or that I love rather to be happy then otherwise or desire rather to possess Lucretia then to desire Clorinda Will she have her tyranny extend even to the Churches patrimony and that the Pope share his temporal Authority with her I do not believe she hath any such pretentions For my part I would she knew I can no longer behold any beauty but naked nor recive any but warm and moist kisses I will tell you the rest upon the banks of Tyber and in these precious ruins whither I go to muse once a day and to tread in their steps who have led Kings in Triumph If there were any means there to finde a little of Sylla's good fortune or of Pompeis greatness instead of the Medals we now and then meet with I should have a farther subject to invite you hither Notwithstanding if you be yet your self and that by solemn vow you have forsaken the World and the vanities

thereof assure your self that it is in this Countrey where felicity doth attend you and that being once in this place you will esteem all those as banished persons whom you have left behinde you in France BALZAC The 25. of December 1621. To the Count of Schomberg from BALZAC LETTER XXIV My LORD I Send you the papers you have formerly seen and whereto you have attributed so much as I should be ashamed to assent thereto were it not that I hold it less presumption to believe I have merited the same then to imagine I can have a flatterer of your fashion I had need be elevated to a more soveraign fortune then the state of Kings to expect complacency from a man who could never be procured to approve evil and of whose disfavour one can hardly finde other cause then the onely truth he hath declared Howsoever it be since you are now in Lymosin and take not any journey in those parts without having a thousand old debates to reconcile and as many new ones to prevent it is very propable that after so painfull an imployment and so great disquiet of minde my book will fall into your hands just at such time as you cannot finde any thing more tedious unto you then what you come from treating of For should I presume that in your pleasant walks of Duretal where all your minutes are pleasing and all your hours precious there could be any time spare for me and my works it were as much as to be ignorant of the diversions there attending you or not to be acquainted with the great affluence of noble company daily repairing thither to visite you But were it so that you had none with you save onely the memory of your fore-passed actions your solitariness hath no need of books to make it more pleasing nay if all this were not yet if you desire to seek contentment out of your self you cannot finde any more pleasing then in the presence of your Children and particularly of that Divine daughter of yours from whom I daily learn some miracle It is therefore in her absence and in solitary walks where I have the ambition to finde entertainment and to receive gracious acceptance In all other places without presuming either to pass for Oratour or Poet it shall highly suffice me in being honoured with the assurance that I am My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 25. of May 1624. A Letter from the Count of Schomberg to Mounsieur de BALZAC LETTER XXV SIR THe stile you travail in causeth the Pens of all such who attempt an answer to fall out of their hands and Eloquence may so properly be called yours that it is no marvel though others have but a small share therein I would therefore have you know that if I understand any thing in Letters yours do obscure whatsoever hath hitherto been esteemed of in our Language and that without flattering you there can be no diversion so pleasing which ought not to give place to the perusing of those Lines you sent me This occupation is worthy the Cabinets of Kings and of the richest Eare curtins of France and not as you would have it of my solitarie retirements in Lymosin from whence I am ready to be gone with resolution never to retire from the affection I have promised you whence you shall at all times draw effectual proofs whensoever you please to imploy them for your service Sir Your most affectionate servant SCHOMBERG The 1. of June 1624. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC The fourth Book To my Lord Mashall of Schomberg LETTER I. My Lord I Should be insensible of publick good and an enemy to France had I not as I ought a true taste of the good news your Foot-man brought me I will not mention the Obligations I owe you being no small ones if that be not a slight matter to be esteemed by you But since I make profession to honour virtue even in the person of one departed or an enemy and at all times to side with the right were there onely my self and Justice for it you may please to believe I complain in your behalf for the miseries of our times and that I am most joyfull to see you at this present where all the World mist you Certainly your retirement from Court hath been one of the fairest pieces of your life during which you have made it apparent you are the same in both fortunes since I can witness that no one word then passed from you unsuitable to your resolution Yet this rare virtue being there hidden in one of the remote corners of the World having but a very small circuit to dilate it self must necessarily be contented with the satisfaction of your conscience and slender testimonies In the mean time the authority of your enemies hath been obnoxious to all honest eyes There was no means to conceal from strangers the States infirmities or what reason to affoard them for the disgrace of so irreproachable a Minister nor was there any who grieved not that by your absence the King lost so many hours and services For my part my Lord reflecting upon you in that estate it seemed to me I saw Phidias or some other of those ancient Artists their hands bound and their costly materials as Marble Gold or Ivory taken from them But now that better time succeed each thing being again reduced to its place it is time to rejoyce with all good French men that you shall no more want matter and that the King hath at length found how unusefull your absence hath been to his affairs Truely be it that he content himself to govern his people wisely or that the afflictions of his poor Neighbours set near his heart and that his Justice extend further then his Jurisdiction No man doubts whatsoever he doth but you shall be one of the principal instruments of his designs and that as well Peace as War have equal use of your conduct All men have well perceived you have not contributed any thing to the administration of the Kings treasure save onely your pure spirit to wit that part of the Soul separated from the terrestrial part being free from passions which reasoneth without either loving or desiring and that you have managed the Riches of the State with as great fidelity as one ought to govern another mans goods with as much care as you conserve your own and with as great scruple as we ought to touch sacred things But in truth it is no great glory for that man to have been faithfull to his Master who knows not how to deceive any And did I believe you were onely able to abstain from ill I would barely commend in you the Commencements of virtue I therefore pass further and am assured that neither the fear of death which you have slighted in all shapes and under the most dreadfull aspects it could possibly appear nor complacency which often overpasseth the best Counsels to transport it self to

flash which pleaseth instantly as beauty doth and makes things to be lovely before one knows they are good Your words are no way unworthy of your Authour they neither weaken his conceits by stretching them out at length nor scatter the sence by spreading it out in breadth But contrariwise the powerfull spirit which was streightened within the bounds of a concise stile seems to breath at ease in this new liberty and to encrease it self as much as it spreads it self he seems to pass from his fetters into triumph and to go forth of the prisons of Rome where Nero shut him up to enter into a large Kingdom into which you bring him with royal magnificence There are some so curious palats they cannot relish the language of the Son of God and are so impudent as to accuse the holy Scriptures of clownishness and Barbarisme which made Mounsieur who died Archbishop of Benevent that he durst not say his Breviary for fear to mar his good Latin by contagion of the bad and least he should take some tincture of impurity that might corrupt his eloquence I will not speak at this time what I conceive of his scruple onely I say that if in the vulgar Translation there be Barbarism yet you have made it civil and if our good Malherb should come again into the World he would finde nothing in your Paraphrase that were not according to the strictness of his rules and the usage of the Court whereof he spake so often Some other time we will confer about the Preface and the Letters I received which I have in a manner all by heart but especially I have culled out these dear words to print in my memory and to comfort my spirits A little patience will crown you all their throws seem like those of sick men a little before they die in which I think there is neither malice nor force if you can but dispise them Prefer the better side before the greater and the Closet before the Theater Honest persons are for you and I make account you care not much for pleasing others The people have often times left Terence for dancers upon the Rope and banished Philosophers to gratifie Jesters I have nothing to add to this and will take heed how I sow Purple with pack-th●ead I content my self Sir at this time to assure you that I passionately am Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of May 1632. To Mounsieur de Thibaudiere LETTER XXIII SIR I Will not raise to you the price of my tears though I have shed them for you eight dayes together I content my self to tell you that I am now comforted since the news of your death it changed into tidings of your hurt and that I am made assured you may be quitted of it for a little pain and a little patience I know well that virtue is more happily imployed in well using honest pleasures than in patient bearing troublesom crosses and that without an absolute distemper in the taste one can never finde any sweetness in pain yet you shall confess unto me that there is a kinde of contentment in being lamented and though the joyes of the minde be not so sensible as those of the body yet they are more delicate and more subtill at least you have come to know of what worth you are by the fear which all honest men were in to lose you and that in a time when half the World is a burthen to the other and every one reserves his lamentation for his own miseries yet all in general have mourned for you in such sort Sir that you have had the pleasure to hear your own Funeral Oration and to enjoy the continuance of a happy life after receiving the honours done to worthy men after death If the War of Italy continue till Winter I will come and learn from your own mouth all the particulars of your adventures and I shall then know if your Philosophy have not been moved and waxed pale at the sight of the Probe and of the Rasour In the mean time do me honour to be mindefull of him who exceedingly honours you and to keep for me that part in your affection which you have promised me since I truely am Sir Your c. At Balzac 29. of July 1630. To Mounsieur Gyrard Secretary to my Lord the Duke de Espernon LETTER XXIV SIR I Had heard that before which you sent me word of by your footman and had rejoyced already for the new Dignity of Mounsieur the President Segnior It seems you think he is made Lord Keeper of the Scales for none but for you and that no Feast for the joy of it should be kept any where but at Cadillac Within these four dayes you shall see it kept all the Countrey over it is a favour the King hath done the whole Realm It is not so much for the purity of the air and for the fruitfulness of the earth that we ought to call it a happy year as for the election of worthy Magistrates I therefore take a joy in this news as I am a subject of the Kings and this is the first Right I claim in it but beyond this I have a second Right of rejoycing in that I am interessed in the advancement of a modesty which I know and make account to be made happy by the prosperity of him of whose honesty I am assured I put not forth this last word at adventure I am ready to make it good against whosoever shall think it rash and I know he hath preservatives against all the poysons of the Court and a judgement that cannot be corrupted with all the bribes of Fortune There is nothing of so high a price for which he would be willing to leave his virtue if he had lived in Neroes time he had been a constant Martyr but living now under a just Prince he will prove a profitable Officer To preserve a life which is to continue but a few dayes he would not obscure that life which ought to last in the memory of many ages and the least spot upon his honour would be more insupportable to him than the effusion of all his bloud He knows that in the administration of Justice being the interpreter of God he cannot work of himself that this Divine Act ought to be a general Suspension from all humane affections and that in the exercise thereof he is no longer at his liberty to shew love or hatred revenge or gentleness He considers that he makes not law but onely declares it that he is a Minister and not a Master of his Authority and that the Soveraignty is in the Law and not in himself This is the reason why in every cause he censures he bethinks himself of his own proper cause which shall one day be censured he so judgeth as if Posterity were to take a review of his judging and as though the present time were but subalternate to the future Thus I have heard him to make

against a tumultuary multitude and count my self strong enough having you on my side and knowing you to be as vigorous a friend of mine as I am Sir Your c. From Balzac 15. Feb. 1633. To Mounsieur Gaillard LETTER XXXVII SIR I Am unfortunate but I am not faulty I was assured you had written to me but I received not your Letters You have been my defendour and I have been a long time without knowing to whom I was bound for defending me whether it were a man or an Angel that was come to my succour These are honest subtelties and generous supererogations This is to deceive in charity and to his advantage that is deceived This is to bring again that good time wherein Knights unknown came to Freemen that were oppressed without telling their names or so much as lifting up the Beavers of their Helmets You have done in a manner the like you have hidden your self under a borrowed shape thereby to take away from a good action all apparence of vain glory and to let them that are interessed see that you are virtuous without looking for reward For my self I do not think I am bound to follow the intention of this scrupulous virtue If you have a will to shun noise and the voice of the people yet you cannot refuse the acknowledgement of an honest man nor let me from paying what I owe you Because you are modest I must not therefore be ungratefull as I am not by my good will I assure you You possess my heart as absolutely as you have justly purchased it I am yours by all the sorts of right not forgetting that of the wars I will even believe that my enemy hath gotten a full victory to the end I may more justly call you my Redeemer and that you may have the Crown that was due to him had saved a Citizen Mounsieur Borstill whose wisdom and integrity you know will answer for the truth of my words and for my self I shall need no surety when I shall be able to testifie unto you by my actions that there is not in the World a man more than my self Sir Your c. From Balzac 22. April 1630. To Mounsieur the Master Advocate in the Parliament LETTER XXXVIII SIR I Have too great a care of your reputation to seek to have you be found a liar It shall not lie upon me that you be not a man of your word and that your friend is not contented and seeing it is expected to see this present day what I have written of his company It is not fit to put off till to morrow the effect of your promise or that he should languish in the expectation of so small a thing It is true my book is not here and my memory is not now so faithfull that I dare trust it to deliver that I gave it to keep yet I conceive after I have stirred it up in your name which is so dear unto me I shall finde enough to satisfie your desire and receive from it this good office I seem therefore to remember I said that after so many years that the Christian Muses have been in France he is the onely man hath entertained them with honour and hath built a Pallace for this soveraign science to which all other are subject and inferiour He hath drawn her our of an obscure and close mansion where like the poor Socrates she discoursed in prison of the supream felicity to place her a seat worthy of her and to set up a stately and sumptuous race for the exercise of her Children From hence we may apprehend the dignity and merit of our Sorbon for which a man the fullest of business in all the World hath yet had so particular a care amidst the most violent agitation of his thoughts that the design of the house he erects for her hath found place in his breast amidst the Forts and Rampires of Rochell If our predecessors the Gaules next to their Gods gave the second place of honour to their Druides who shewed them but a dim and confused light of the state of our Souls after this life what respect then what reverence can be too great for those venerable Fathers who teach us by a knowledge most infallible what the chief and supream good is who discover to us in certainty the things that are above the Heavens who make us true relation of that admirable Common-wealth of happy Citizens that live without bodies and are immaterial and who deliver to us the wonders of the intellectual World more pertinently and more directly than we relate to blinde men the ornaments of this visible World With them are had the springs of pure Doctrine where with others but onely Brooks and Streams with them are had resolutions of all doubts remedies for all poisons with them time wrongs not antiquity nor doth old age either need painting or fear tainting with them this sixteenth age of the World beholds Christianity preserved and kept in its first lustre Seing the memory of the most part of the Romane Lords is perished together with their Baths their Aqueducts their Races their Amphitheaters whereof the very ruins are themselves ruined and lost I finde that M. the Cardinal understands more than ever they did and goes a straighter way to eternity travelling in a place where his travel can never perish and leaving the care of his name to a company that of necessity shall be immortal and shall speak of his magnificence as long as there shall be speaking of sin and grace of good and evil Angels of the pains and rewards of the life to come I believe I have not spoken any further of it and I think I could not have spoken less it is lawfull for us to set a price upon our own and if an ancient Writer said that more worthy men came forth of Isocrates School than out of the Trojan Horse why may not we say as much of Albertus Magnus and of Saint Thomas Me thinks I hear out Countrey men speak of nothing else but of the Lycaeum and of the Academy and it is now five and twenty years that I have beaten my brains about the Gymnosophists the Brachmanes and the Rabbins but when all is done we should remember that we are Christians and that we have Philosophers that are nearer to us and ought to be dearer to us than all they I am glad occasion hath been offered me to put my opinion hereof in writing and thereupon to let you know I make no mystery of my writings and especially with you to whom I have opened my very heart and whose I am wholly without reservation Sir Most humbly c. At Paris 4. July 1633. LETTERS of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC LIB II. To my Lord the Earle of EXETER LETTER I. SIR IF you had wholly misliked my book I had wholly defaced it but seeing some parts of it seemed to you not unsound I have thought it sufficient to cut off the corrupt part

facilitate the overture he will propose unto you obtaining for him of onely one quarter of an hours audience I assure my self he will not be loath to hear him being able to inform him of the state of things in these parts and which he will do faithfully having thereof a special knowledge You shall therefore my Lord infinitely oblige him to take him into your protection and you may be pleased to remember that it is your dear Son that makes this request unto you one whom in the extasie of your Fatherly affection you have sometimes called your glory and the ornament of this age who yet accounts no quality he hath so glorious as that which he will never part with whilest he lives to be My Lord Your c. From Balzac 3. of April 1631. FINIS A SUPPLY TO THE SECOND PART OR THE THIRD PART of the Letters of Mounsieur De BALZAC Written by him in French and Translated into English By Sr. R. B. LONDON Printed by J. G. for Francis Eglesfield at the Marigold in St. Pauls Church-yard 1654. To my LORD the Cardinall De la Valet LETTER I. SIR being not able to bring you this untoward Present my selfe I humbly entreat you to execuse mee that I send it Wherein I bind you not to a second perusall and to read that againe which perhaps you have read already with distast It is true Sir that something is altered in the Copy and well neere one halfe added to the Originall but the spight is that base Wares get no value by store and the water that comes from the same Spring can never be much differing but if in any of the passages I have not altogether come off ill and that I have had some tolerable conceits I acknowledge Sir that I have had it all from the good education I had with you and that it is the fruit of those Instructions which you have done me the honour to impart unto me For no man ever had conceits more pure more pregnant than your selfe no man ever saw things more cleerly than you doe you can tell precisely in what degree of good and evill any thing stands and to find out the truth there needs no more but to follow your Opinion But to speake truly I feare this quality in you no lesse than I esteeme it you have too much knowledge in you for a Discourse that requires simplicity in the Reader Neither am I so unadvised to expose it to the severity of your judgement I submit it rather to the protection of your goodnesse and hope you will not lay open those faults which none but your selfe shall see Humbly entreating you to protect a spirit of your own making and not so much to consider my manner of expressing as the affection with which I am Sir Yours c. To the same as before LETTER II. SIR I am negligent for feare of being troublesome and lest I should be Importunately complementall I forebeare to shew my selfe officiously dutifull But my fault growing from discretion I hope you will not take it ill that I have a care not to trouble you and that you will pardon the intermission of my Letters which hath no other end but the solacing your Eyes I seeke no colours of Art to paint out the affection I owe to your service This were to corrupt the naturall purity Truth is simple and shamefast and when shee cannot shew her selfe by reall effects shee will scorne to do it by verball expressions It is not in my tongue to expresse her otherwise than in such termes as are the engagements of a lye and when I shall have made you most sincere protestations of inviolable fidelity there will come a couzening companion that will out-vy me and endeare himselfe beyond all my oathes I could wish there were some marke to distinguish protestations that are true from those that are feigned for if there were I should have great advantage over many Courtiers more officious and more hot in offering their service than I am and you should acknowledge that the eminency of your vertue not to speake of the eminency of your dignity is of no man more religiously reverenced than of my selfe who am and ever will be Sir Your c. To Monsieur Godea LETTER III. SIR Disguising will not serve your turne you are a remarkable man and whether it be that you call the dissembling of Art Negligence or that you cannot put off those ornaments which are naurall in you I let you know that the excellency of your stile extends even to your familiar speech and that you are able to sweeten it without sawcing it A man may see that come springing and flowing from you which in others is brought a far off and that with engines you gather that which others pull off and though you write nothing loosly yet you write nothing with streyning yet I must tell you they are not the periods of your sentences nor the pawses that winne me so much unto you I am too grosse for such slender and fine threads if you had nothing but rich conceits and choice words this were but the vertue of a Sophister and I should place you in the number of things that may please but not of things that one ought to love I make more reckoning of the honesty of a dumbe man than of the eloquence of a varlet I looke after the good of society and the comfort of life and not after the delight of Theaters and the amusement of company Let us make then a serious profession of our duties and let us give good examples to an evill age let us make the world see that the knowledge we have of vertue is not meerly speculative and let us justifie our Bookes and our Studies that now are charged with the vices and imperfections of their Teachers Philosophy is not made to be playd withall but to be made use of and we must count it an Armour and not a painted Coate They are men of the worst making that now a dayes make the worst doing sots take upon them to be subtle and we have no more any tame Beasts amongst us they are all savage and wilde For my selfe who have seene wickednesse in its Triumph and who have sometime lived in the Countrey of subtlety and craft I assure you I have brought nothing from thence but loathing and before ever I tasted it was cloyed I am exceeding glad to find you of the same diet and doubt not of the Doctrine I Preach seeing I read the same in your owne Letter Believe it Sir there is none more wholesome none more worthy of our Creation Which I am resolved to maintaine even to Death and will no more leave it than the resolution I have made to be without ceasing Sir Your c. To Monsieur Godeau againe LETTER IV. SIR I have known a good while that you are no longer a Druyde and that you lately made your entry into Paris I doubt not but

tyrant shee might perhaps be some amusment to him when he were cloyed with killing of men but withall shee might be sure to be the next object of his crueltie at the next fit of his wicked humour You know the Story of Mariamne our Theaters at this day sound forth nothing so much as the cryes of this poore Princesse he that puts her to death loved her above measure and after her death kneeled downe a thousand times before her image praying her to forgive him Poppea was first the Mistris afterwards the wife and alwayes the Governesse of Nero she had vanquished this Monster and made him tame yet at last he slipt from her and in an instant of his choler gave her a kicke upon the belly which was her death His unkle Caius dealt not so roughly with Caesonia yet in the greatest heat of his fire he made love to her in these termes This fayre bead shall be chopt off as soone as I but speak the word and told her sometimes that he had a great minde to put her on the racke to make her tell him why he loved her so much The meaning Madam of all this is that the tamest of all Tygers is a cruell Beast and that it is a most dangerous thing to be wooed with talons I have seene the Booke you writ to me of and find it not unpleasing particularly where speaking of the makers of Pasquius and of satyricall Poets he sayth that besides the golden age the age of silver of brasse and of iron so famous and so much talkt of in their Fables there is yet behinde to come an age of wood of which the ancient Poets never dreamt and in the miseries and calamities whereof they themselves shall have a greater part than any other If I goe abroad to morrow I hope to have the honour to see you In the meane time that I may observe good manners and not be wanting in formalities I will say I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 16. Aug. 1626. To LETTER XLV MY Lord besides the thankes I owe you for my self I have a speciall charge from Madam de to thanke you from her and to give you a testimonie of your Coachmans skill He is in truth a great man in his profession one might well trust him and sleepe from hence to Paris He glides by the brink of Praecipices and passeth broken bridges with an admirable dexteritie say what you can of his manners otherwise Pardon mee my Lord if I maintaine that they be no vices and that you doe him great wrong to reproach him with them in your Letter He doth that by designe which you thinke he doth by inclination and because he had heard that a man once overthrew the Commonwealth when he was sober he thinkes that to drinke well is no ill qualitie to well governing He takes otherwise no care for going astray seeing he hath a God for his guide and a God that was returned from the Indies before Alexander was come into the world After so long a voyage one may well trust Father Denys with a short walke and he that hath yoked Tygers may well be allowed to guyde horses Your Coach-man my Lord hath studied thus farre and if they who hold in their hands the reynes of the State to use the phrase of had beene as intelligent and dextrous as he they would have run their race with a better fortune and our age should not have seene the fall of the Duke of nor of the Earle of it is written to me from the Court that These are onely Newes I received by the last Post but I send you in their companie the Booke you desired which is as you know the Booke of the wickednesse of the world and the ancient originall of all the moderne subtilities The first Christians endeavoured to suppresse it and called it Mendaciorum Loquacissimum but men at this day make it their Oracle and their Gospell and seeke in it rather for Sejanus and Tigilinus to corrupt their innocency than for Corbulo or Thrasea to instruct them to vertue at our next meeting wee shall talke more hereof The great Personage I have praysed stands in doubt that his Encomium is at an end and presseth me to conclude that I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 4. June 1634. To LETTER XLVI SIR I am sorry to heare of the continuance of your maladie though I hope it be not so great as you make it These are fruits of this unseasonable time and I doubt not but your Fleame which overflowes with the rivers will also with the fall of the rivers returne againe to its naturall bounds I have had my part in this inundation and it would be no small commoditie to me that things should stay in the state they now are in for by this means my house being made an Island I should be lesse troubled than now I am by people of the firme Land But seeing upon the abating of the waters depends the abating of your Rheume I am contented with all my heart they shall abate as above all things desiring your health yet withall I must tell you there is care to be used you must absteine from all moyst meates forbeare the good cheare of Paris and follow the advise of an ancient sage who counselled a man troubled with your disease to change the rayne into drowth You see how bold I am to send you my praescriptions I entreat you to follow them but not to imitate me for in this matter of Medicines I confesse my selfe a Pharisee I commend a Julippe to others but I drinke my selfe the sweetest Wines But to speake of something else I cannot imagine why Monsieur de should keepe me languishing so long and haveing made me stand waiting three moneths after his time appointed should now require a further prorogation and a longer delay For my part I verily beleeve he spake not in earnest when he made you this untoward answer and that it was rather for a tryall of your patience than for an exercise He hath the reputation of so honest and just a man that I can make no doubt of that he hath promised to Monsieur de and I am perswaded he accounts himselfe more streightly tyed by his word than by his bond Monsieur de beleeves that I have fingred my money a yeare since and you know it is a summe provided to stoppe three or foure of my Persecutours mouthes who will never leave vexing you with their clamours day and night till they be satisfied It is therefore your part to use all meanes possible to content them at least if you love your libertie and take not a pleasure to be every morning saluted with extreame unpleasing good morrowes I expect hereupon to heare from you and am Sir Your c. At Balzac 17. Jan. 1630. To LETTER XLVII SIR you ate too just to desire such duties from a sicke friend as you would exact from one that were in

inviolable and have the priviledge of sanctuary yet prophane persons stick not to lay hands on the Saints themselves and on their Altars and nothing is so sac●ed that can escape the hand of sacriledge Onely those persons that can revenge offences may venture to give offences and one that will give the lye must be of a condition to fight a Duell and maintaine it by Armes My Neece hath no great need of these precepts nor indeed of any forraigne instruction she cannot wander from the right if she goe not astray from her owne inclination nor can be troublesome to others if shee borrow not a vice which is none of her owne I have therefore represented to her the woman of the other day but after their example who shewed their slaves drunke to their Children and that is to make her afraid of filthy Objects and to make that hatefull to her which is not in it selfe lovely to confirme her in the principles which you have taught her and to draw her out some rules from her owne action She is I know naturally good but the best natures have need of some method to guide them and direction doth never any hurt to vertue she is able to keep her selfe in termes extremely obliging without ever falling into the basenesse of flattery She is able to please without colloguing and although she call not every thing by the right name nor be so very curious to speak in proper termes yet her stile shall not for that be the lesse liked nor her company the lesse desired she may call them wise that want the reputation of being valiant and women that are sad she may say they are serious If a man be not of a quick spirit she may say he is of a good judgement and if one be unfortunate in his actions she may yet say he hath a good meaning in his counsails But yet in this there is a measure to be held and a choyce must be made in laying her colours that she seeke not to disguise all sorts of subjects for there are some indeed that are not capable of disguising Those that are pale she may praise for their whitenesse but those that have a dropsie she must not praise for their fatnesse she may say that scruple is a bud of pietie but she must not say that prophanenesse is an effect of Phylosophie She may make a favourable construction of things doubtfull and sweeten the rigour of particular judgements but she must not contend against common sence nor be opposite to verities that are publicke and manifest She must make a difference betweene errours and crimes betweene a docible simplicitie and a presumptuous stupiditie betweene sots that are honest and those that are wicked And if she happen to be in company where some weake spirit is oppressed as the world is full of such that will triumph over the weak and take no pittie of any she must then by all meanes be a protectresse of such a one and make her selfe a Sanctuary for all those whom stronger adversaties would otherwise ruine This onely is to be observed that she so undertake the maintaining of weake causes that it may appeare by the tune of her voyce that it proceeds from excesse of goodnesse and not from want of knowledge and that she compassionates humane infirmities by an act of charity but makes not her selfe a party by false perswasion I am now at the end of my paper and should have beene a good while since at the end of my letter but I alwayes forget my selfe when I am with you and never thinke howers shorter than those I bestow upon your memorie And so my deare sister I bid you farewell not without great longing to see you and if you and all your company come not hither the next weeke I proclaime it to you that I am no longer At Balzac 10. July 1634. Your c. THE SECOND PART of the third Volume of the Letters of MONSIEUR DE BALZAC To my Lord the Cardinall Duke of Richelieu LETTER I. MY Lord being stayed here by some occasions I suffer this hard necessitie with a great deale of paine and account my selfe banished from my Countrey being so long a time deprived of your presence I deny not but the victorious and triumphant Newes that comes continually from the Armie gives me some resentment of joy and that the brute of your Name in all quarters toucheth me very sensibly but it is no perfect satisfaction to me to learne that by others relating which I ought to know as an eye-witnesse and I conceive so great a pleasure to consist in the sight of your glory that there is not a common souldier under your Command whose happinesse and good fortune I doe not envie But my Lord though I cannot serve you with my bodily actions yet I revere you day and night with the thoughts of my minde and in this so worthy an imployment I never thinke the noblest part of my selfe can doe service enough Your Lordship next to the King is the eternall object of my spirit I never turne my eyes from the course of your life and if perhaps you have Courtiers more officious than my selfe and such as doe their duties with greater ostentation and shew yet I am most sure you have no servant that is more faithfull and whose affection comes more truely from his heart and is fuller of life and vigour But to the end my words may not be thought vaine and without ground I send you now a proofe of that I say by which you shall perceive that a man that is himselfe perswaded hath a great disposition to perswade others and that a Discourse founded upon the things themselves and animated with the truth both stirres mens spirits with greater force and also begets a firmer beliefe than that which is but feigned and comes but in the nature of Declayming This my Lord is a part drawne out from the whole bodie and a piece which I have taken most paines to polish which I freely vow unto you that all the houres of a calmer leisure than mine and all the powers of a more elevated spirit than ordinary would have found work enough to bring to perfection In it there is handled Of the vertue and victories of the King Of the Justice of his Armes Of Royalty and Tyranny Of usurpers and lawfull Princes Of Rebellion chastened and liberty mainteined but because the Prince I speake of is a stirrer and makes no stay any where and that in following him I should imbarque my selfe in a world of severall subjects I have therefore prescribed to my selfe certaine bounds which in his actions I should never have met with and after the example of Homer who finished his Ilias with the death of Hector though that were not the end of the warre I have thought fit not to goe further than the taking of Size though this were but the beginning of the wonder we have seene of his You know my

eye upon my Booke for presenting an image of those things which offend them so much And they who believe Fables and Romances and are in passion for an Hercules or an Achilles who perhaps never were They who reade with extasie of joy the actions of Rowland and of Reinold which were never done but upon Paper These men will finde no rellish in a true History because it gives testimony to the vertue of their naturall King They can like well enough that against the credit of all Antiquity Xenophon being a Graecian and no Persian should frame Cyrus a life after his owne fancie and make him die in his bed and amongst his Friends when yet he dyed in the warres and overcome by a woman and they can like well enough that Plinie should tell a lye in open Senate and praise Trajan for temperance and chastitie who yet was given to wine and to another vice so fowle that it cannot honestly be named but they can by no meanes like that I who am the Kings subject born should say that of him which no man can deny to be most true and that being to make a patern for Princes I should rather make choice of his life than either of that of Cyrus which is fabulous or that of Trajan which is not the purest that I may not speake of that of Caesar Bogia which is all blacke with licentiousnesse and crimes Heaven it selfe is not able to give this kinde of people a Governour to their minde He that was according to Gods owne heart should not be according to theirs They would not thinke S●lomon wise enough nor Alexander valiant enough They are generally enemies of all sorts of Masters and accusers of all things the present time affords They make our heads ake with crying out that there was no necessity to make a war in Italy but if you had stayed still at Paris they would have cryed out much lowder that it had not been honest to suffer our allyes to perish Because some of our Kings have made unfortunate voyages beyond the mountaines therefore they will needs have it that our King though he follow not their counsels should yet fall into their misfortunes They accuse your conduct with old proverbs because they cannot with sound reasons They say Italy is the Church yard of the French and being not able to observe the least fault in all your carriage in that countrey they lay upon you the faults of our auncestors and charge you with the errour of Charles the eighth Yet I conceive that these mens sinne is rather of infirmity than of malice that they are rather passionate for their opinions than Pensioners of our enemies and that they have more need of helpe by Physick than of restraint by Law But it is a grievous thing to see how the busie-bodyes of our time speake the same language which Rebells did in times past and abuse the happinesse of liberty even against him who hath procured it unto us They come continually and tell me we are like to receive much prejudice by the discontent of such a Prince that is gone from our side And I answer them it is better to have a weake enemy to fight withall than a quarrelsome friend to make much of They will by all meanes that the King at any price should succour Cazall and I tell them that he hath succoured it already by his conquest of Savoy and that in the state as things now stand it cannot be taken but to be delivered back They are not contented that you performe actions that are extraordinary they looke you should performe some that are impossible And though there arise sometimes such difficulties in things that they cannot by any possibility be encountred I say not by defect in the undertaker but by reason of repugnancy in the subject yet they will not take for payment such reasons as wise men are satisfied withall but they would have the King doe that which the Turke and Persian joyned together were not able to doe Th●se things my Lord would put me extreamly into passion and I could never be patient at such excesse of ungratefulnesse if I did not remember that there hath sometimes beene a spirit so sullen and so sawcy that it dared to finde fault with the workes of God himselfe and was not afraid to say that if he had been of his counsell as well in the creation as in the government of the world he would have given him better advise than he tooke at first or than he now followes After so immense a folly you must not thinke it strange if there be some extravagants and the vulgar at all times hath beene found but an unjust Judge of vertue and yet for all that it hath never beene without admirers and now if those that have but little instinct and can doe nothing but murmure and doe not favour him it is for us my Lord to testifie unto you that reasonable men and such as know how to speare are of the better side At Balzac 4. Aug. 1630. Your most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC Another to him LETTER II. MY Lord hearing that Monsieur de meanes to question me about the Benefice you did me the honour to give me and that by vertue of his dispensation he hath sent to take possession I have conceived no better shelter to avoide this storme than under the greatnesse of your Name nor any safer defence against the forces of such an adversary than the respect of such a Protector as you are I require not in this any strayning of your Lordships power I know you are sparing of it in your owne proper interests and reserve it for occasions that are publicke and important I onely require the continuance of your love and that you would signifie to him that tr●●bles me you would be glad he would let me be at quiet F●● besides that to stand in suit with a man of his robe were as much as to fight with a M●ster of Fence and to put ones whole right in h●z●rd It would trouble me my Lord though I were assured of successe to thinke I should owe any part of it to any other besides your selfe seeing I account it more glory to receive from you than to w●est from another Monsieur de may doe well to keepe his dispensation for a better ma●ket and draw much more profit with a little patience And indeed I verily believe he lookes for nothing to make him surcease but for some demonstration from you of your desire and that he rather hath an ambition to be intreated by M. The Cardinall than any designe to take your gift from me I humbly intreate your Lordship to give him contentment in this poynt and not suffer me to fall at this first step of my Fortune and that I may not alwayes be unfortunate being as I am with all my soule At Balzac 8. Novem. 1631. Your c. Another to him LETTER III. MY Lord I am

infinitely bound unto you for the honour you have done me to remember me and for the paines you have taken to write in my behalfe to Monsieur de It is true your paines hath not had so good successe as I verily hoped it would for though he had given out that for his satisfaction he required no more but some small signe that it was your desire yet having received that signe he continues still in the same termes and holds the same rigorous course he did It makes me thinke my Lord that he knowes well enough of what worth your commendation is certainly if it had beene imployed for any other but my selfe it had found all the yeilding and respect it meriteth but indeed I cast unfortunatenesse upon all matters I deale in my evill Fortune suffers me not to make benefit of your love you have no sooner a thought to doe me good but presently a thousand impediments arise to hinder it You give me presents and doe not receive them You command I should be paid my pension and your command is not obeyd Not yours my Lord of which one might say Est fatum quodcunque votes You have read my Booke with pleasure and spoken of it with commendation and yet I suffer persecution for making it as much as to say for being a true Frenchman and a lover of publique Liberty For as for the objections they make against me they certainly are but colours and pretences If may words be not learned or eloquent they are yet sound and full of truth There is not one to be found in all my worke which a meane Advocate were not able to defend before the severest Tribunall in the world The makers of Libells who condemne them are the men of all other that first corrupt them I begin my Lord to be weary of this long and obstinate injustice my Philosophy beginnes to faile me in this case and I should be clean and altogether out of heart if I had no● your goodnesse to rely upon For this at this day is the common refuge of all oppressed innocents and no man invocates it in vaine I therefore make my selfe believe that it will at last send me also some faire dayes after so many storms and tempests raised against me by mine enemies and that after you have saved Nations and set Princes in their Thrones it will be no hard matter to relieve a poore private man who adores you and whom calumny seeks to ruine I know some my Lord whom you have made happy and yet scarce knew their names when you did me the honour to speak well of me And some I have knowne advanced by you that lay hidden in the throng when your selfe dr●w me out and placed me amongst the few yet what get I by it For in truth I could never make any use of this advantage because indeed I could never serve you with such care and subjection as the forwardnesse of your favours obliged me to doe My indisposition hath alwayes hindred my good designes I have alwayes combated with weaknesse of body and never durst venture to beginne a life which I was not assured I was able to hold out This hath forced me my Lord to court you in a new fashion and to seeke to doe you service by my absence and ease and not trouble you with unseasonable officiousnesse and with many low cur●sies to no purpose I am able to say unworthy as I am that I was the first man that preached the wonders of your life unto the people exhorted all Frenchmen to do their duties have in mine owne person given good example in the Provinces and have healed many spirits that were sick and ill perswaded of the present government I am not so well knowne by my name as by my forwardnesse in your service And when the spitefull rumour ranabroad of late many persons of quality can tell how grievously I tooke it and how I resolved to follow you to the worlds end if so be the unfortunatenesse of France should remove you from the Court Yet I am not troubled that I make you these proofes of my Fidelity though they would be lesse difficult to me than to entertaine you as now I doe with my interests which to say true is a cruell torture I put my selfe to It is not my desire you should have misfortunes to the end I might make use of my consolations nor it is my wish there should be disorders in my Countrey and disgrace to my Master to the end I might the better shew my selfe a good Frenchman and a loyall servant But yet my Lord why may I not be of some use in a calme and have a place as well in the joy as in the sorrow You alone are the Author of your victory but you alone cannot furnish your triumph but must have many Artificers to worke about it I have materials enough to make many large Fabricks but to undertake the worke I must entreat your Lordship I may have a little contentment or at least a little quiet The splendour of your person is so great that it sends forth beames of light to your remotest servants and the power which heaven hath given you is so redoubtable to all sorts of Tyrants that to give a period to my persecution there needs no more but that you give some signe you meane to protect me which favour I perswade my self you will not deny me for besides the common cause of being oppressed you have knowne a long time that I make a speciall profession to be My Lord Your c. At Balzac 5. Jan. 1632. To Monsieur Cytois Physitian to M. the Cardinall LETTER V. SIR my curiosity were undiscreet if I should aske you newes of occurrents in the Army but you cannot take it ill that I aske you news of my Lord the Cardinals health I learne the progresse of his glorious actions by the mouth of Fame but I must learne from you how he fares in his continuall agitation and whether the temper of his body feele no alteration by the violent motions of his spirit I conceive that God doubles his force when there is need and that he hath regard to the necessity of so many people that cannot misse him but I know also that he makes use of the second causes and that your cares and industry concur with this providence The services you doe to one particular man are obligations to all the world Never had any Science a more worthy or profitable imployment than yours hath And if the Romanes erected a statue to Antonius Musa for healing of him who oppressed their liberty why may not you justly expect a publick acknowledgement for preserving of him who makes us all both free and happy I send him the discourses which I humbly entreate you to take care they may come to no other hands but his and therefore that you will keepe them in your custodie that they may be safe untill I come my selfe to Paris I

from thence I will acquaint you with it and intreate this savour from you that you will believe I passionatelie am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 June 1635. To Mounsieur Girard Secretary to M. the Duke D' Espernon LETTER IX SIR your last Letters have exceedingly comforted me and you have such things for me that they make me forgetfull of all my miseries With such a friendship I can mocke at ill fortune and it makes me taste contentments which good fortune knowes not of It is true that your absence is a perpetuall cooling Card to my joy and possessing you but in spirit it requires a very strong imagination to desire nothing else Shall we never come to be Citizens of one City Never to be Hermits in the same Desart Shall my Counsayle be alwayes twenty myles from me and must I be alwayes forced to passe two Seas to fetch it when I need it I hope your justice will doe me reason and that Heaven will at last heare the most ardent of all my prayers but in the meane time whilst I stay waiting for so perfect a contentment I would be glad to have of it now and then some little taste if it be not in your power to give your selfe at least lend your selfe for some few dayes and come and sit as supreame President over both my French and Latin I promise you I will never appeale from you to any other onely for this once give me leave to tell you that the word Ludovix which you blame as too new seemes to me a more Poeticall and pleasing word than either the Aloysius of the Italians or our Ludovicus and besides It favours of the Antiquity of our Nation and of the first language of the Gaules witnesse these words Ambiorix Eporedorix Orgetorite Vercingetorix c. In which you see the Analogie to be plaine yet more than this I have an Authority which I am sure you will make no difficultie to allow you know Monsieur Guyet is a great Master in this Art but perhaps you know not that he hath used this very word Ludovix before I used it for I tooke it from these excellent Verses of his Non tulit hoc Ludovix justa puer acer ab ira Et patriae casum sic videamus ait For other matters Sir you may adde to that which was last alledged in the cause of Madam Gourney this passage out of the divine Jerusalem where Aladin calls Clorinda the Intercessour of Sophronia and of her lover Habbian vita Rispose libertade E Nulla a tanto Intercessor se neghi I kisse the hands of that faire creature you love and am withall my soule Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb. 1635. To my Lord the Earl of Port. LETTER X. SIR I have received a letter from you since your being in England but not being able to read the Gentlemans hand that sent it to me for want of a decipherer I have been forced to be uncivill till now and have therefore not answered you because indeed I knew not whom to answer but now that this Gentleman whose name is a mysterie in his letters is by good fortune come againe into this countrey I can by no meanes suffer him to part without some testimony of the account I make of your favour and the desire I have to preserve it by all the possible meanes I can I will make you Sir no studied Protestations nor send complements to a man that is borne in the Countrey of good words I will onely say there are many respects that make your person dear unto me and that besides the consideration of your vertue which gives me just cause to honour you that also of the name you beare and of the ranke you hold are things that exceed the value of indifferencie I love all them that love France and wish well to our great Prince of whom in truth I have heard you speake so worthily that as often as I remember it it stirres me up to doing my duty and to profit by so good an example If it had been seconded in Italy we should have seene all we could have hoped But God himselfe saves none but such as contribute themselves to their salvation Saguntum was taken while the Senatours were deliberating and a wisedome that is too scrupulous commonly doth nothing for feare of doing ill The most part of Italians are themselves the workmen to make their owne setters they lend the Spaniard their blood and their hands to make a slave of their countrey and are the parricides of their mother of whom they might have been the redeemers But of all this we shall talke more at Paris if you come thither this Winter as I am put in hope you will In the meane time doe me the honour to let me have your love and to believe me there is none in the world more truly than I Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XI MY Lord the joy I take in the recoverie of your health is not yet so pure but that it alwayes represents unto me a terrible Image of your last sicknesse The imagination of a danger though past and gone yet makes my memorie afraid and I looke upon it rather in safety than with assurance We missed the losing you but very narrowly and you were upon the poynt to leave us Orphans I speake it seriously and without any flattery at all all the victories we have gotten or shall get would never be able to make us amends for such a losse you wouldd have made our conquest turne to mourning M. the Cardinall would have found something to complaine of in his great felicitie and would have watred his triumph with his tears Let it not be Gods will to lay this crosse upon our time and if it be a crosse inevitable yet let it be deferred to our posteritie It is necessary the Phoenix should live out her age and that the world should be allowed time for enjoying the possession of so profitable and sweet a life as yours It is true the world is not worthy of you but my Lord the world hath need of you your vertue indeed should long since have been crowned but that your example is still necessary and the more happie ones there be in heaven the fewer honest ones will be left upon earth Love therefore your selfe a little for our sakes begin now at last to studie your health which hitherto you have neglected and make a difference hereafter betweene cold and heate betweene good and bad aire betweene meates that are sweet and those that are bitter Though you take no care of your health for your own sake yet you must take care of it for the common good For I beseech you my Lord tell me what should become of the cause of the poore what of the desolation of widdowes what of the innocencie of men oppressed I speake not of the hope of such as hope for

not that my unfortnatenesse makes the easiest that are to become unpossible I see no reason you neede to imploy your whole forces about this matter there needes no more but onely the motion of your will and a light impression of your credit with to give it all the solidity and lustre I desire I should not seeme to understand the tearmes of the last Letter he did me the honour to write unto me if I had not yet some little hope left and a kinde of satisfaction in my owne Conscience Yet I alledge to him no merit of my part but much generousnesse of his nor speake of any services of mine to recompense him but of his goodnesse that prevents them and subjects not it selfe to the rigours of ordinary justice This my Lord is all the right I alledge for my selfe and all the title upon which I ground my pretensions but now I leave following it my selfe and put it wholly into your hands a place perhaps to which my ill fortune her selfe will beare a respect but if she shall be opposite to your desire and prevaile above your favour yet at least I shall thereby know the force of destinie to which all other forces give place and which cannot be mastered by any force nor corrected by any industry but yet it shall not hinder me from resting well satisfied seeing I shall in this receive much more from you than I am denyed by him it I hold any part in your grace favour which is already my comfort against whatsoever ill successe shall happen It sufficeth me to be happy with this kinde of happinesse which is more deare to me than all the happinesse the Court can give me being a man no more ambitious than I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 25. Decemb. 1634. To my Lord the Bishop of Poitiers LETTER XXVII MY Lord although Monsieur de hath promised me to give you assurance of the continuation of my service yet I cannot forbeare to adde these few lines to his testimony and to tell you that which I tell to all the world that your vertue is a transcendent far above the abilities and carriage of our age It is a match for Antiquity in its greatest purenesse and severity When the Camilli and the Scipio's were not in employment they reposed themselves and took their ease as you doe and when I consider sometimes the sweet life you lead at Dissay I conclude that all the imployments of the Palace and all the intricacies of the Court are not worth one moment of a wise mans idlenesse It is well knowne that from your childhood you have despised Vanity even in her kingdome and that in an ayre where she had attractives able to draw the oldest and most reluctant spirits All the pomp of Rome hath not so much as given you one temptation and you are so confirmed in a generous contempt that if good Fortune her selfe should come to looke you out you would scarce goe out of your Closet to meet her in your Chamber This is that I make such reckoning of in your Lordship and which I preferre before all your other qualities for those how great soever they be are yet but such as are common with many base and mercenary Doctors whereas this force and courage are things that cannot be acquired in the noyse and dust of Schooles You found not these excellent qualities in the Vatican Library nor yet got them by reading of old Manuscripts you owe them indeed to Monsieur your deceased Farther that true Knight without spot or wrinkle equally skilfull in the art of warre and in affaires of peace and that was the Heros of Muret of Scaliger and of Saint Mart. I propose not a lesse object for my worship than they did neither indeed is it lesse or lesse aeligious than theirs was and though you did not love me as you doe and though you should denounce warre against me and become head of a faction to seek my ruine yet I should not for all that forbeare to revere so rare a vertue as yours is but should still remaine My Lord Your c At Balzac 4 May. 1630. To Monsieur Guyet LETTER XXVIII SIR I feare not much to lose a thing I esteem but little but holding your friendship in that account I do if I should have lost it I should never see day of comfor more you must not therefore think it strange that I was moved with the Alarum that was given me for though I know my selfe to be innocent yet I conceived my unfortunateness to be such that I may give credit to any bad news Now that Monsieur de hath quieted the agitation of my mind and hath assur'd me of your love I cannot forbear to signifie unto you the joy I take telling you withall that so I may preserve a friend of your merit and worth I do not greatly care for loving him ●hat will leave me There is little to be seen amongst men but malice and weakness and even of good men the greatest part is scarce sound this is a cause why a firm constant spirit as yours is is of wonderfull use in society it is no small benefit to them that are wearied and overtoyled as I am to have a person to rest upon that cannot fall There is need of courage to maintain a friendship indeed of prudence to performe the meanest duty of life t is nothing worth to have a sound will if the understanding be defective it is to no purpose that one makes vows and sacrifices Nil vota furent●m Nil delubra juvant he complains without cause of his spleen and his other inferiour parts this is to accuse innocents the evil no doubt comes from a higher place it is the brain that is cause of all the disorder The knowledge I have hereof makes me have compassion of him and excuse in a Dr. of threescore years old those base shifting tricks that are not pardonable in a Schollar of eighteen Any man but my self would call his action a cowardice a treason but I love to sweeten my grief as much as I can cannot become an enemy at an instant pass from one extremity to another without making a little stay by the way I honour still the memory of our former friendship and cannot wish ill to a man to whom I have once wisht well but this is too much of complaining quarrelling Do me this favour I beseech you to make choise of something in your study for a consolation of my solitude I have already the Encomium of Monsieur the Admirall de la V●let but I would fain have the Epitaph of my Lady the Dutchess of Esp●●non and those admirable Elegies you shewed me once In quibus tam●e Tibullo similis quam Tibullus sibi I intreat you to deliver them to Monsieur who will see them safely delivered to me if you please we will use him hereafter as our common correspondent who knowing me to

the very bottom of my heart will I doubt not most willingly adde his testimony to my protestations that I truly am Sir Your c. At Balzac 25. Sept. 1630. To Monsieur de L'orme Physitian in ordinary to the King and Treasurer of France at Burdeaux LETTER XXIX SIR it is not now onely that I make a benefit of your friendship I have had profit by it a long time and you have often been my advocate with so great force and so good successe that they who had before condemned me were glad to revoke their sentence as soon as they heard you speake yet all this while you did but onely speake well of me now you begin to doe well for me it is you whom this year I may thank for my pension Without you Sir my warrant would never have perswaded my partner it would presently have been rejected and he still have continued inexorable But it must be confessed there is no wi●de beast but you can tame no matter so bad but you can make good as you heal maladies that are incurable so you prevaile in causes that are desperate and if you finde never so little life and common sense in a man you are able to restore him to perfect health and make him become a reasonable man I desire not to have the matter in any better terms than you have set it I am glad I shall not need to invocate M. the Cardinall for my dispatch and that Monsieur hath promised not to faile to pay me in September If he should pay it sooner I should be faine to desire you this favour to keep it for me till that time Now I onely intreat you to draw from him a valuable at assurance of it and for so many favours and courtesies done me I shall present you with something not altogether so bad as those I have already shewed you and seeing one cannot be called valiant for having the better of a coward neither can I be accused of vanity for saying I have exceeded my selfe I am therefore bold to let my Letter tell you thus much that if my false Pearles and counterfeit Diamonds have heretofore deceived you I doe not think that the shew I shall make you of my new wares will use you any better Yet my meaning is not to praeoccupate your judgement who neither of my selfe nor of my writings will have any other opinion than what you shall please to allow me Since the time I have wanted the honour of seeing you I have made a great progresse in the vertue of humility for I am now proud of nothing but of my friends affections Let me therefore never want yours I intreat you as you may believed I will all my life most passionately be Sir Your c. At Balzac 8. Decemb. 1629. To my Lord LETTER XXX MY Lord I hope you will not take it ill that I put you in minde of a man to whom you have heretofore made demonstration of your love and that after a long intermission of these petty duties which are then troublesome when they are frequent you will give me leave to tell you that I have indeed omitted them but more by discretion than by negligence I know Sir you have no time to lose and to put you to the reading of unprofitable words what were it but to shew an ignorance how much the King imployes you and how the present affaires goe It is therefore the respect I bear to your continuall imployments that hath caused my silence and I should be very absurd if in the assiduity of your cares I should present you with little pleasing amusements and should look for an answer to some poore complement when you have so many commandements of importance and so many orders of necessity to deliver forth It is enough for me that you do me the honour to cast your eyes upon the protestation I make you that in all the extent of your command there is not a soule more submisse nor more desirous to beare your yoak than mine is and that as much as any in the world I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 10 Aug. 1630. To Monsieur Senne Theologall of the Church of Saints LETTER XXXI SIR you need not wonder to see your name in the Book I send you Lovers you know leave marks of their passion every where and if they were able would fill the whole earth with their cyphers and devices It is a custome as ancient as the world for with that began writing also and at first for want of paper men graved the names of those they loved upon the barks of trees If any man wonder I should be in love with a Preacher why wonders he not at that Romane of whom a Grecia● said that he was not onely in love with Cato but was enchanted with him You have done as much to many others in this country and I have here as many Rivals as you have Auditors Yet there is not the same object of all our affections they run after your words and hang at your mouth but I go farther and discover in your heart that which is better than your eloquence I could easily resist your Figures and your Arguments but your goodness and your freeness take me captive presently I therefore give you the title of a perfect friend in your Encomium because I account this a more worthy quality than to be a perfect Oratour and because I make most reckoning of that vertue in a man which humane society hath most need of For other matters remember your self in what terms I did speak to you of the business you write of and that onely to obey you I have been contented to alter my opinion I was well assured the enterprise would never take effect but I thought it better to faile by consenting than by obstinacy and rather to take a repulse than not to take your counsell I have known a long time that fortune means me no good and the experience I have of her hath cured me of the malady of hope and ambition Make me not fall into a relapse of these troublesome diseases I beseech you but come and confirm my health you Sir that are a soveraign Physitian of souls and who are able to see in mine that I perfectly am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10. Feb. 1635. To Monsieur de Piles Cleremont LETTER XXXII SIR having heard of the favourable words you used of me at the Court I cannot any longer forbeare to give you thanks nor stay till our next meeting from telling you how highly I esteem this favour I cannot but confess I did not look to finde so great a graciousness in the country of maliciousness and seeing that the greatest part even of honest men have so much love for themselves that they have but little or none left for strangers I thought with my selfe that the infection of the world might have lightly touched you and that either you had no passions in you at

was touched to the very quick for the death of yet seeing he is happier than they that mourn for him and that he hath left the world in an age when he yet knew it not I think it no wisdome to be obstinate in an ill grounded sorrow or to account that an evill to another which is the greatest good could have happened to my selfe Christianity will not let me say Optimum non nasci Bonum vero quam citissime interire but it hinders me not to believe that one day of my life with B●ptisme is better than a whole age of iniquity I write this Letter to you from whither I am come to lodge after I had entertain●d my Lord untill night I conceived there was some necessity to deliver him your Letter with all speed and therefore I exposed my person to all the injuries of an incensed skie and ventured to make a voyage that would have frighted a stouter man than my selfe By this you may know that I count nothing difficult which reflects upon any interest of yours or which cencernes your contentment and I love you so much that I should not say so much if I had more craft in me than I have But my good Nature exceeds all other considerations of vulgar Prudence and I would not keep you from knowing what great power you have over me though I knew before-hand you would abuse this power For other things I am very glad to heare you begin to grow sensible of the charms of musique and that you go to the Consorts which are in reputation Yet I have seen the time when your eares were no learneder than mine and when you made no great difference between the sound of Lutes and the noyse of Bells See what it is to frequent good company and to live in a Country of neatnesse I that stirre not from the Village know no other musique but that of Birds and if sometimes I heare a more silver sound it comes from those noble Animalls which Monsier Heinsius praiseth so much and which by Lucians saying serve for Trumpets in the Kingdome of the Moone I give you a thousand thanks for your newes but especially for the last it is certaine that the choice of Monsieur de Belieure to the Ambassadour of Italy is a thing will be generally well liked men talk wonders already of his beginnings of the readinesse and Vivacity of his Spirit of the force and stayednesse of his Judgement besides some other excellent qualities of his Age from which we may hope for much And for my selfe who am one that love my Country exceedingly I cannot but exceedingly rejoice in this new fruitfulnesse which comes upon him at the latter end of his old age It doth me good to see famous deceased men to live againe in their excellent posterity and I doubt not of the good successe of a Negotiation where a Belieure a Thou or a Sillery is imployed These were our Heroes of the long Robe and the Princes of our Senate and now their children that I may continue to speak Latin in French are the Princes of our youth at least they are names more happy and that portend more good to France than the name of and no doubt she will have cause to thank M. the Cardinall for respecting races that are so deare unto her and for stirring up in the Kings minde the old inclinations of the deceased King his Father I fall asleep at this very time I am talking with you and am rather in case to make ill Dreames than good Discourses and so I take my leave of you my deare and perfect friend as I also am to you as much as possibly can be Sir Your c. At Balzac 4 Octob. 1634. To Monsieur Talon Secretary to my Lord the Cardinall De la Valette LETTER XLII SIR I took infinite pleasure to see my self in one of your Letters and Monsieur who imparted it to me can witnesse for me with what greedinesse I read that passage which concerned me I cannot say that he is here though it be true that he is not in Gascoigne for we enjoy nothing of him here but his Image he is so married that he would think it a disloyalty to his wife if he should dare to laugh when she is not by All his sociable humour he hath left with her and hath brought nothing to us but his Melancholy When I would make him merry he tels me I goe about to corrupt him All visites he makes in her absence though it be to Covents and Hospitals yet he calls them deboystnesse So as Sir you never saw man better satisfied with his present estate not a greater enemy to single life He is not contented to pitty you and me and to lament our solitude but he reproacheth us outragiously and calls us unprofitable members of the Common-wealth and such as are fit to be cut off As for me I make no defence for my selfe but your example I tell him let him perswade you to it first and he shall soone finde me ready to follow his counsell I hope we shall meete together ere long and then we shall not neede to feare his being too strong for us in our conferences when we two shall be against him alone Provide therefore Solutions for his Arguments but withall deny me not your assistance in other encounters where it may stand me instead You can never doe courtesies to a man more capable of acknowledgement nor that is more truely then I Sir Your c. At Balzac 12 Febr. 1633. Another to him LETTER XLIII SIR I am exceedingly well satisfied with the newes you send me and with the assurance you give me by your Letter of the continuation of your friendship Not that I was afraid I should lose it but because it is a pleasure to heare ones selfe called happy and that one cannot have too many titles for a possession which can never be too much valued I take not upon me to contend with you in Complements or to dispute of civility with you who live in the light of the world and have whole Magasins of good words For besides that I never had any skill of the Court it is now so long I have been a countryman that it were a miracle if I had not cleane forgot it all Pardon therefore a rudenesse which I cannot avoid and seeing I am not able to answer you give me leave to assaile you and require you to give a reason of the present state of things What can you say Sir of these wretched Flemmins who shut their gates against good Fortune when she would come into them and are in love with their Fetters and their Keepers I do not think there be truer slaves in all Asia and I do not wonder our arms can do no good in their Country seeing it is a hard matter to take a yoak from mens heads who prefer it before a Crown Soveraignty when it is offered Sick men are

great experience you have in many things I desire of God with all my heart that he will be pleased to afford you yet some great matter to exercise your selfe in and that this wise old age of yours which we so much admire may long continue to be a strength and ornament to your family These are my earnest wishes and withall to make you by a perfect acknowledgement of your favours a perfect proof that I am Sir my deare Father Your c. At Balzac 7 June 1634. To Monsieur de Boisrobert LETTER LI. SIR the Muses never favoured man as they do you you are the onely man that need neither retreite nor leisure for your meditations In the troubles of the world you possesse your spirit in peace and seeing the bruit of the Court diverts not your attention neither can the Sea and all its waves hinder your compositions It is no small advantage to finde that solitude in ones selfe which others seeke for in the Desart and not to be bound to goe out of the world for fetching in of sound opinions and perswasive words If the merit of yours take place we shall shortly see at Stage-playes as many long Cassocks as short Robes and the most austere Philosophers will have their hands and eyes in the recreations of the people and so Sir of a mischiefe you shall make a remedy you shall set timerous spirits at liberty and shall free us from two terrible Monsters scrupulousnesse and vitious bashfulnesse You make me long to bear a part in this action and in this sort to defend the Theater to take the field after you is not so much to fight as to pursue the victory and I think it no wrong to vertue to justifie an innocent pleasure and that which is onely worthy of her this we owe to Jason to Masinissa to Brutus and other worthy men who live at this day in the person of the man you so much commend and whom I admire as often as I heare It is certaine that the grace with which he pronounceth vertue gives them a degree of goodnesse which the Poets could not They are more beholding to him that pronounceth them than to him that made them and this second Father if I may so speak purgeth by his adoption all the vices of their birth the tune of his voice accompanied with the dignity of his gestures gives a kinde of noblenesse to the vulgar and base conceits No soule is so strongly fortified against the objects of sense which he forceth not No judgement so wary and so well prepared which is not caught with the imposture of his words in such sort that if in this world there be any happinesse for verses it is certainly in his mouth and in his pronouncing by which as evill things get the colour of good so good things get the uttermost of their perfection Let me know Sir wether I hit right upon your inclinations and in the mean time I give you many thanks for your many favours particularly for the Letter of my Lord you took the pains to send me He writes indeed in the style of a Conquerour and these words Accepi legi probavi savour much of these Veni vidi vici of J Caesar and of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of another Ceasar that was afterwards Though I should never receive other mark of his love but this yet were this a full recompence of all the passion I ow to his service yet I must tell you I cannot forget the honour he hath done me in procuring me a promise that I shall be paid of I have done all possible I could to blot this thought out of my minde but I confesse unto you that my imaginative part is a little strong I could never hitherto satisfie my selfe herein and what bad answer soever I receive from men yet still I rely upon this word of God who commands me to hope well and therefore I wait still for the accomplishment of the Oracle All our people are extreamly bound unto you for remembring it and I am my selfe more than all the world together Sir Your c. At Balzac 3 April 1635. FINIS LETTERS OF MONSIEVR DE BALZAC THE FOURTH VOLVME Newly corrected Printed in the year 1654. To the READER THe name of Balzack is not confined within the Orbe of one Kingdom his pen hath made him known unto all that pretend to Eloquence and Politer Learning And had his language been more general his worth had been more known It is then a duty we owe to virtue to unfold it when it is contracted within too narrow limits and to unlock the Cabinet and make it communicable when it is restrained from that freedom which is part of its essence and nature Wherefore some of our own finding that our Authors Language was too narrow for the merits of his works have rendered some pieces of his in English Nor did their Travails fall short of their hopes but success hath crowned their endeavors By the incouragement of their auspicious flight abroad I made Augury touching the fortunes of this fresh piece whtch I now expose to the common light without the countenance and patronage of any great name but guarded onely with its own fate It hath a Genius and carries the name of Balzac in every page that is enough For know Reader that he is Master of the pen in France L' Aigle de l' Eloquence Francoise as one stiles the great Chancellour Du Vair a towring Eagle whose strength of wings bears him aloft above the tracts of common flights I may say of him with some variation what Pliny said of Cicero that of latter times and for his own language solus in toga triumphum meruit linguaeque lauream and if the Muses speak French they would use no other Dialect than that of Mons de Balzac If thou dost not find the same thread run through all his Letters think it a peece of his Art to vary the Idea and character of his speech according to the quality of his subject Wherefore we finde him sometimes lofty and magnificent and sometimes grave and moderate now he is calm and smooth and anon he thunders and lightens here his words fall like hail and there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like still and gentle snow or the silent feet of time And though they be but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strictures and excursions of his pen yet upon due examination thou shalt finde they be decoctions of purest Rhetorick and take away Monsieur vostre tres humble they be so many quaint orations and discourses politick and morall But never did any beauty gain all sufferages nor any wit a general applause Our Author in his Hermitage like that Bee intombed in Amber Dum latuit luxit he shined through the vail of obscurity where in he involved himself but some Owleys could not brook the splendor of his light though at such a distance and declination and he had

more cruel then the warre and more severe then justice He hath slain in his Letters my Lord the Marshal of and my Lord the Duke of who are yet alive to pardon him Tell him if you please that he do not traffick any more in such newes for he will be reckoned among the fabulous Authors else and men will take me for bad intelligence I know well that he is not suretie for the newes that flies abroad but he is answerable for the asseveration wherewith he doth recommend them unto me and he must talk of something that is not knowe or at leastwise with the cautious form of the Poets when they say ni faema est ut perhibent si eredere dignum est I bid you good even and remain perfectlie Sir Your c. Balzac 4. Feb. 163● To the same LET. XL. YOur friend doth not well to take the Alarm since it is not I that gave it him I was never used to promise but with an intention to perform and those that have soveraign power over me have not power enough to make me falsifie my word As for those idle contemplators that talk according to their fancy concerning the occasion of my Voyage I do not think it any part of their office to render an account of my actions I ever thought that the liberty of going and coming was tolerated as lawful in this Kingdom and when a man departed out of Paris he was not bound to publish a Manifesto to make it known to all the world It is not without reason that Monsieur de St●ben doth much esteem the eloquence of M●ffeus The late Monsieur Scaliger who was none of the best friends the Jesuites had did so befo●e him and see here one trace of his pen concerning it in one of his Letters M●ffaeùt ille quisquis est vir elequentissimus est ambitiosae taemen magis quam cast gatae facundiae He commends him you see though not without exception yet in my judgement without envy since in this particular the most Intelligent of the Society concur with him in the same opinion and namely the Historiographer of the Low-country warres who in his Dialogues speaks of him thus though it be in the person of another Miratus sum florem numeros O●ationis Dixi Scriptorem mihi videri non hujus aevi sed è veteri illo Ordine q●t tem Patricio Historicorum Nihil uspiam incultum neglectumque cone●nnae perfectáque omniae nisi forie eo peccat quòd nihil peccat nam ingenium Scriptoris avxium apparet interdum dictio videtur exquisita ad sonum eumque famili moduletione crebrò fusum Quare monui ut orationis culturam saepius ●●b●ntiusque dissimularet nec verbae itae trajiceret quasi complementa numerorum I am yet in the same state that you left me in at parting but that I have still the same malady though not the same consolation My Ague visits me every night though indeed not in the same pomp and ceremony as it used when its accesses were regu●ar But yet it doth still handle me rudely and I do much fear the consequence of this custom Come Sir and exorcize this evil spirit out of my body by the infusion of some mirth into my minde and think not that I can receive any true joy being so far distant from you I am Sir Your c. Balzac 7. April 1635. To the same LET. XLI SIR Since it is impossible to withstand it I have sent you the Letter that you desired to see But you shall read it if you please to your own ears onely that it may not awake Envie And that some Philarchus do not over-hear you Loe here withall the three lines of Bentivolio's Letter which you did so often demand of me and which I can no longer deny you without incivility Di nuovo prego V. S tia a ringratiar c. I do again intreat you to thank Monsieur Balzac in my name and by the same opportu●ity to make him an ample testimony of my great affection towards his deserts and tell him this withall that no pen doth more discourage me then his for I see too well how farre it doth surpasse mine I must confess that in this particular to do me grace he hath been unjust to himselfe and that the same motion of humility that prompts Princes of his rank and parent●ge to wash poor mens feet hath moved him to use me so respectively Neither do I pretend to take a pride in it but yet I think it will not be denied but that I may derive some comfort from it And indeed it seems that the goodness of this brave Worthy would needs make me amends for the malice of my Adversaries These few lines do weigh down the swelling Volums of my Opponents and I shall use no other refutation of all that hath or shall be written against me For the present Sir I am not of that mans opinion who censures that passage La noire mere des estoiles the Poet that so stiles the night is not so bold and rash as the Grammarian supposeth that reprehends him And if this be as he saith a Gasconisme Tibollus was a Gascon when he said Ludite jam Nox jungit equos currumque sequuntur Matris lascivo sydera fulva choro The Night there is mother of the starres as in another Poet the Nurse of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nox aurcorum furva nutrix syderum Our Man writes to me oft enough but he puts me to hereafter in all his Letters and doth ever promise what he never performs Neverthelesse I do believe that He will certifie me by the first Poste touching the event of that businesse which makes you so anxious and I will not sail to impart unto you the newes as soon as ever the Carrier bringeth them I am Sir Your c. Balzac 20. July 1632. To Madamoisell de Campagnole LET. XLII MY deare Niece You did not well that you did not keep that Houry Chaplet which I had the favor to receive from your Lackey the winter would not have budded but for you and by consequence you should have better valued this favor and managed your Roses more sparinglie They should have been bestowed about your temples for an honor to its pregnancie and not have been bestowed on an Hermit for this were to hide a miracle J see well your drift herein you would needs be liberal in a time of scarcitie and lose your own right that you might please my passion with something which is so much affected with true and lively flowers which J do term so because the other which men do so much esteem having not any odour which animates are in my judgemrnt but fair Pictures or specious Carkasses But J beseech you to resolve me one scruple that doth trouble me and ease me of my perplexitie Tell me was this because there be some alreadie or because there be some yet left are these