Part 1 — The Answer of Monsieur le Marquis de Barbasieux, to Cardinal Mazarine.

YOUR eminence I find, is in a great passion, because my father did not get an estate in your service: Must you therefore abuse him, and turn that as a crime upon me, which has been practis’d ever since there have been kings in the world? If your talent only lay in pillaging and plundering, must it therefore prescribe to mine? And do you think the glory of taking away by dagger or poison the enemies of one’s prince, deserves less immortality, than of ruining of his subjects? You have, I confess, very meritoriously eterniz’d your name by that method, for which reason you ought in conscience to allow me the liberty to find out another. You are much in the wrong on’t, to complain of the duke of Mazarine, who did you the honour to think you were only in purgatory, and lavish’d your treasures upon bigots, in hopes to pray you out of it. If he in a holy fit of zeal, dismember’d your fine statues, which perhaps too often recalled to your memory the pious sermons of cardinal Anthony, he is severely punish’d in a libel made against him, in vindication of your beauteous niece. If that satire reaches your regions below, you’ll soon be convinced what a coxcomb you were when you chose the worst of men, to couple with the most charming of women. This, with several other passages of your life, makes me not much wonder at your condemning me by your cardinal’s authority, to drink Aquafortis, and eat burning charcoal; it may perhaps be a proper diet for Epicurean cardinals and Italians, who love hot liquors, and high-season’d ragoos; but the lords of Chaville and Meudon do not desire your entertainments. How do you know, I beseech you, but I may take the cell of the young Marquis d’Ancré at [16] Mont Valerine; there, by a long penitence, to purge me of those sins you say I have committed? Therefore if you reckon me in the number of those reprobates, doom’d to people the infernal shades, time will at last make it appear, that your eminence has reckoned without your host.