The Baroness de Beausoleil
the value of the services of the two foreigners, but unwilling, for all that, to pay them, now, as acknowledgment, conferred on them a new brevet, giving them extended powers, and elevating the Baron to the grade of Inspector-General of all the mines in France. If glory alone could suffice as a reward to merit, the Baron du Châtelet and Madame de Bertereau must have felt content with the dignity now conferred upon them. But a glory which cost them their whole fortune, and which in no way repaid their labours, must have seemed to them a bitter deception.
Little by little the worthy couple had to reduce their retinue and to curtail their expenses, and after ten years of unrequited exertion in behalf of the crown, their train was scanty enough. However, their hopes were not yet exhausted, promises had been made to them of the most brilliant description, and they relied upon the honour of the French crown to redeem them.
In 1640 the Baroness appealed to Cardinal Richelieu in a pamphlet entitled "La Restitution de Pluton à l'Eminentissime Cardinal Due de Richelieu," a second title-page adds, "with a refutation of those who believe that mines and subterranean matters are only discovered by magic and by the aid of the devil."
Whether the Cardinal read the memoir or not, we cannot say, but undoubtedly he perused the dedicatory epistle, or, at all events, the sonnet it
159
