Note 74 — Chapter I
Reading edition
Richelieu appears to have formed the design of humbling the nobles, at least as early as 1624. See a characteristic passage in his Mémoires, vol. ii. p. 340. In Swinburne's Courts of Europe, vol. ii. pp. 63–65, there is a curious traditional anecdote, which, though probably false, shows, at all events, the fear and hatred with which the French nobles regarded the memory of Richelieu more than a century after his death.