At last, on the third of December, 1642, the great statesman lay upon his death-bed.  The death-hour is a great revealer of motives, and as with weaker men, so with Richelieu.  Light then shot over the secret of his whole life’s plan and work.

He was told that he must die:  he received the words with calmness.  As the Host, which he believed the veritable body of the Crucified, was brought him, he said, “Behold my Judge before whom I must shortly appear!  I pray Him to condemn me, if I have ever had any other motive than the cause of religion and my country.”  The confessor asked him if he pardoned his enemies:  he answered, “I have none but those of the State.”

So passed from earth this strong man.  Keen he was in sight, steady in aim, strong in act.  A true man,—­not “non-committal,” but wedded to a great policy in the sight of all men:  seen by earnest men of all times to have marshalled against riot and bigotry and unreason divine forces and purposes; seen by earnest men of these times to have taught the true method of grasping desperate revolt, and of strangling that worst foe of liberty and order in every age,—­a serf-owning aristocracy.

UNDER THE SNOW.

The spring had tripped and lost her flowers,
  The summer sauntered through the glades,
The wounded feet of autumn hours
 Left ruddy footprints on the blades.

And all the glories of the woods
  Had flung their shadowy silence down,—­
When, wilder than the storm it broods,
 She fled before the winter’s frown.

For her sweet spring had lost its flowers,
  She fell, and passion’s tongues of flame
Ran reddening through the blushing bowers,
  Now haggard as her naked shame.

One secret thought her soul had screened,
  When prying matrons sought her wrong,
And Blame stalked on, a mouthing fiend,
  And mocked her as she fled along.

And now she bore its weight aloof,
  To hide it where one ghastly birch
Held up the rafters of the roof,
  And grim old pine-trees formed a church.

’Twas there her spring-time vows were sworn,
  And there upon its frozen sod,
While wintry midnight reigned forlorn,
  She knelt, and held her hands to God.

The cautious creatures of the air
  Looked out from many a secret place,
To see the embers of despair
  Flush the gray ashes of her face.

And where the last week’s snow had caught
  The gray beard of a cypress limb,
She heard the music of a thought
  More sweet than her own childhood’s hymn.

For rising in that cadence low,
  With “Now I lay me down to sleep,”
Her mother rocked her to and fro,
  And prayed the Lord her soul to keep.

And still her prayer was humbly raised,
  Held up in two cold hands to God,
That, white as some old pine-tree blazed,
  Gleamed far o’er that dark frozen sod.