Memoirs of Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (Complete‪)‬

MADAME:—Though I have a natural aversion to give you the history of my own life, which has been chequered with such a variety of different adventures, yet I had rather sacrifice my reputation to the commands of a lady for whom I have so peculiar a regard than not disclose the most secret springs of my actions and the inmost recesses of my soul.

By the caprice of fortune many mistakes of mine have turned to my credit, and I very much doubt whether it would be prudent in me to remove the veil with which some of them are covered. But as I am resolved to give you a naked, impartial account of even the most minute passages of my life ever since I have been capable of reflection, so I most humbly beg you not to be surprised at the little art, or, rather, great disorder, with which I write my narrative, but to consider that, though the diversity of incidents may sometimes break the thread of the history, yet I will tell you nothing but with all that sincerity which the regard I have for you demands. And to convince you further that I will neither add to nor diminish from the plain truth, I shall set my name in the front of the work.

False glory and false modesty are the two rocks on which men who have written their own lives have generally split, but which Thuanus among the moderns and Caesar among the ancients happily escaped. I doubt not you will do me the justice to believe that I do not pretend to compare myself with those great writers in any respect but sincerity,—a virtue in which we are not only permitted, but commanded, to rival the greatest heroes.

I am descended from a family illustrious in France and ancient in Italy, and born upon a day remarkable for the taking of a monstrous sturgeon in a small river that runs through the country of Montmirail, in Brie, the place of my nativity.

I am not so vain as to be proud of having it thought that I was ushered into the world with a prodigy or a miracle, and I should never have mentioned this trifling circumstance had it not been for some libels since published by my enemies, wherein they affect to make the said sturgeon a presage of the future commotions in this kingdom, and me the chief author of them.

I beg leave to make a short reflection on the nature of the mind of man. I believe there never was a more honest soul in the world than my father’s; I might say his temper was the very essence of virtue. For though he saw I was too much inclined to duels and gallantry ever to make a figure as an ecclesiastic, yet his great love for his eldest son—not the view of the archbishopric of Paris, which was then in his family—made him resolve to devote me to the service of the Church. For he was so conscious of his reasons, that I could even swear he would have protested from the very bottom of his heart that he had no other motive than the apprehension of the dangers to which a contrary profession might expose my soul. So true it is that nothing is so subject to delusion as piety: all sorts of errors creep in and hide themselves under that veil; it gives a sanction to all the turns of imagination, and the honesty of the intention is not sufficient to guard against it. In a word, after all I have told you, I turned priest, though it would have been long enough first had it not been for the following accident.