"GASTON."
The Duke of Orleans retired before long to his castle at Blois, where he
died in 1660; deserted, towards the end of his life, by all the friends
he had successively abandoned and betrayed.  "He had, with the exception
of courage, all that was necessary to make an honorable man," says
Cardinal de Retz, "but weakness was predominant in his heart through
fear, and in his mind through irresolution; it disfigured the whole
course of his life.  He engaged in everything because he had not strength
to resist those who drew him on, and he always came out disgracefully,
because he had not the courage to support them."  He was a prey to fear,
fear of his friends as well as of his enemies.

The Fronde was all over, that of the gentry of the long robe as well as
that of the gentry of the sword.  The Parliament of Paris was once more
falling in the state to the rank which had been assigned to it by
Richelieu, and from which it had wanted to emerge by a supreme effort.
The attempt had been the same in France as in England, however different
had been the success.  It was the same yearnings of patriotism and
freedom, the same desire on the part of the country to take an active
part in its own government, which had inspired the opposition of the
Parliament of England to the despotism of Charles I., and the opposition
of the French Parliaments to Richelieu as well as to Mazarin.  It was
England's good fortune to have but one Parliament of politicians, instead
of ten Parliaments of magistrates, the latter more fit for the theory
than the practice of public affairs; and the Reformation had, beforehand,
accustomed its people to discussion as well as to liberty.  Its great
lords and its gentlemen placed themselves from the first at the head of
the national movement, demanding nothing and expecting nothing for
themselves from the advantages they claimed for their country.  The
remnant of the feudal system had succumbed with the Duke of Montmorency
under Richelieu; France knew not the way to profit by the elements of
courage, disinterestedness, and patriotism offered her by her magistracy;
she had the misfortune to be delivered over to noisy factions of princes
and great lords, ambitious or envious, greedy of honors and riches, as
ready to fight the court as to be on terms with it, and thinking far more
of their own personal interests than of the public service.  Without any
unity of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples
that came to them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no
Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither people nor army; the
English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed
before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her
minister.  In vain did the coadjutor aspire to take his place; Anne of
Austria had not forgotten the Earl of Strafford.--Cardinal de Retz
learned before long the hollowness of his hopes.  On the 19th of
December, 1652, as he was repairing to the Louvre, he was arrested by M.
de Villequier, captain of the guards on duty, and taken the same evening
to the Bois de Vincennes; there was a great display of force in the
street and around the carriage; but nobody moved,  whether it were," says
Retz, "that the dejection of the people was too great, or that those who
were well-inclined towards me lost courage on seeing nobody at their
head."  People were tired of raising barricades and hounding down the
king's soldiers.

"I was taken into a large room where there were neither hangings nor bed;
that which was brought in about eleven o'clock at night was of Chinese
taffeta, not at all the thing for winter furniture.  I slept very well,
which must not be attributed to stout-heartedness, because misfortune has
naturally that effect upon me.  I have on more than one occasion
discovered that it wakes me in the morning and sends me to sleep at
night.  I was obliged to get up the next day without a fire, because
there was no wood to make one, and the three exons who had been posted
near me had the kindness to assure me that I should not be without it the
next day.  He who remained alone on guard over me took it for himself,
and I was a whole fortnight, at Christmas, in a room as big as a church,
without warming myself.  I do not believe that there could be found under
heaven another man like this exon.  He stole my linen, my clothes, my
boots, and I was sometimes obliged to stay in bed eight or ten days for
lack of anything to put on.  I could not believe that I was subjected to
such treatment without orders from some superior, and without some mad
notion of making me die of vexation.  I fortified myself against that
notion, and I resolved at any rate not to die that kind of death.  At
last I got him into the habit of not tormenting me any more, by dint of
letting him see that I did not torment myself at all.  In point of fact I
had risen pretty nearly superior to all these ruses, for which I had a
supreme contempt; but I could not assume the same loftiness of spirit in
respect of the prison's entity (substance), if one may use the term, and
the sight of myself, every morning when I awoke, in the hands of my
enemies made me perceive that I was anything rather than a stoic."
The Archbishop of Paris had just died, and the dignity passed to his
coadjutor; as the price of his release, Mazarin demanded his resignation.
The clergy of Paris were highly indignant; Cardinal de Retz was removed
to the castle of Nantes, whence he managed to make his escape in August,
1653; for nine years he lived abroad, in Spain, Italy, and Germany,
everywhere mingling in the affairs of Europe, engaged in intrigue, and
not without influence; when at last he returned to France, in 1662, he
resigned the archbishopric of Paris, and established himself in the
principality of Commercy, which belonged to him, occupied up to the day
of his death in paying his debts, doing good to his friends and servants,
writing his memoirs, and making his peace with God.  This was in those
days a solicitude which never left the most worldly: the Prince of Conti
had died very devout, and Madame de Longueville had just expired at the
Carmelites', after twenty-five years' penance, when Cardinal de Retz died
on the 24th of August, 1679.  At the time of his arrest, it was a common
saying of the people in the street that together with "Cardinal de Retz
it would have been a very good thing to imprison Cardinal Mazarin as
well, in order to teach them of the clergy not to meddle for the future
in the things of this world."  Language which was unjust to the grand
government of Cardinal Richelieu, unjust even to Cardinal Mazarin.  The
latter was returning with greater power than ever at the moment when
Cardinal de Retz, losing forever the hope of supplanting him in power,
was beginning that life of imprisonment and exile which was ultimately to
give him time to put retirement and repentance between himself and death.

Cardinal Mazarin had once more entered France, but he had not returned to
Paris.  The Prince of Conde, soured by the ill-success of the Fronde and
demented by illimitable pride, had not been ashamed to accept the title
of generalissimo of the Spanish armies; Turenne had succeeded in hurling
him back into Luxembourg, and it was in front of Bar, besieged, that
Mazarin, with a body of four thousand men, joined the French army; Bar
was taken, and the campaign of 1652, disastrous at nearly every point,
had just finished with this success, when the cardinal re-entered Paris
at the end of January, 1653.  Six months later, at the end of July, the
insurrection in Guienne was becoming extinguished by a series of private
conventions; the king's armies were entering Bordeaux; the revolted
princes received their pardon, waiting, meanwhile, for the Prince of
Conti to marry, as he did next year, Mdlle. Martinozzi, one of Mazarin's
nieces; Madame de Longueville retired to Moulin's into the convent where
her aunt, Madame de Montmorency, had for the last twenty years been
mourning for her husband; Conde was the only rebel left, more dangerous,
for France, than all the hostile armies he commanded. Cardinal Mazarin
was henceforth all-powerful; whatever may have been the nature of the
ties which united him to the queen, he had proved their fidelity and
strength too fully to always avoid the temptation of adopting the tone of
a master; the young king's confidence in his minister, who had brought
him up, equalled that of his mother; the merits as well as the faults of
Mazarin were accordingly free to crop out: he was neither vindictive nor
cruel towards even his most inveterate enemies, whom he could not manage,
as Richelieu did, to confound with those of the state; the excesses of
the factions had sufficed to destroy them.  "Time is an able fellow," the
cardinal would frequently say; if people often complained of being badly
compensated for their services, Mazarin could excuse himself on the
ground of the deplorable, condition of the finances.  He nevertheless
feathered his own nest inordinately, taking care, however, not to rob the
people, it was said.  He confined himself to selling everything at a
profit to himself, even the offices of the royal household, without
making, as Richelieu had made, any "advance out of his own money to the
state, when there was none in the treasury."  The power had been honestly
won, if the fortune were of a doubtful kind.  M. Mignet has said with his
manly precision of language, "Amidst those unreasonable disturbances
which upset for a while the judgment of the great Turenne, which, in the
case of the great Conde, turned the sword of Rocroi against France, and
which led Cardinal Retz to make so poor a use of his talent, there was
but one firm will, and that was Anne of Austria's; but one man of good
sense, and that was Mazarin."  [_Introduction aux Negotiations pour la
Succession d'.Espagne._]

From 1653 to 1657, Turenne, seconded by Marshal La Ferte and sometimes by
Cardinal Mazarin in person, constantly kept the Spaniards and the Prince
of Conde in check, recovering the places but lately taken from France and
relieving the besieged towns; without ever engaging in pitched battles,
he almost always had the advantage.  Mazarin resolved to strike a
decisive blow.  It was now three years since, after long negotiations,
the cardinal had concluded with Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth
of England, a treaty of peace and commerce, the prelude and first fruits
of a closer alliance which the able minister of Anne of Austria had not
ceased to wish for and pave the way for.  On the 23d of March, 1657, the
parleys ended at last in a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive;
it was concluded at Paris between France and England.  Cromwell promised
that a body of six thousand English, supported by a fleet prepared to
victual and aid them along the coasts, should go and join the French
army, twenty thousand strong, to make war on the Spanish Low Countries,
and especially to besiege the three forts of Gravelines, Mardyk, and
Dunkerque, the last of which was to be placed in the hands of the English
and remain in their possession.  Six weeks after the conclusion of the
treaty, the English troops disembarked at Boulogne; they were regiments
formed and trained in the long struggles of the civil war, drilled to the
most perfect discipline, of austere manners, and of resolute and stern
courage; the king came in person to receive them on their arrival; Mardyk
was soon taken and placed as pledge in the hands of the English.
Cromwell sent two fresh regiments for the siege of Dunkerque.  In the
spring of 1658, Turenne invested the place.  Louis XIV. and Mazarin went
to Calais to be present at this great enterprise.

"At Brussels," says M. Guizot in his _Histoire de la Republique
d'Angleterre et de Cromwell,_ "neither Don Juan nor the Marquis of
Carracena would believe that Dunkerque was in danger; being at the same
time indolent and proud, they disdained the counsel, at one time of
vigilant activity and at another of prudent reserve, which was constantly
given them by  Conde; they would not have anybody come and rouse them
during their siesta if any unforeseen incident occurred, nor allow any
doubt of their success when once they were up and on horseback.  They
hurried away to the defence of Dunkerque, leaving behind them their
artillery and a portion of their cavalry.   Conde, conjured them to
intrench themselves whilst awaiting them; Don Juan, on the contrary,
was for advancing on to the dunes and marching to meet the French army.
'You don't reflect,' said Conde 'that ground is fit only for infantry,
and that of the French is more numerous and has seen more service.'
'I am persuaded,' replied Don Juan, 'that they will not ever dare to look
His Most Catholic Majesty's army in the face.'  'Ah! you don't know M. de
Turenne; no mistake is made with impunity in the presence of such a man
as that.'  Don Juan persisted, and, in fact, made his way on to the
'dunes.'  Next day, the 13th of June, Conde, more and more convinced of
the danger, made fresh efforts to make him retire.  'Retire!' cried Don
Juan: 'if the French dare fight, this will be the finest day that ever
shone on the arms of His Most Catholic Majesty.'  'Very fine, certainly,'
answered Conde, 'if you give orders to retire.'  Turenne put an end to
this disagreement in the enemy's camp.  Having made up his mind to give
battle on the 14th, at daybreak, he sent word to the English general,
Lockhart, by one of his officers who wanted at the same time to explain
the commander-in-chief's plan and his grounds for it.  'All right,'
answered Lockhart: 'I leave it to M. de Turenne; he shall tell me his
reasons after the battle, if he likes.'  A striking contrast between the
manly discipline of English good sense and the silly blindness of Spanish
pride.  Conde was not mistaken: the issue of a battle begun under such
auspices could not be doubtful.  'My lord,' said he to the young Duke of
Gloucester, who was serving in the Spanish army by the side of his
brother, the Duke of York, 'did you ever see a battle?'  'No, prince.'
'Well, then, you are going to see one lost.'  The battle of the Dunes
was, in fact, totally lost by the Spaniards, after four hours' very hard
fighting, during which the English regiments carried bravely, and with
heavy losses, the most difficult and the best defended position; all the
officers of Lockhart's regiment, except two, were killed or wounded
before the end of the day; the Spanish army retired in disorder, leaving
four thousand prisoners in the hands of the conqueror.  'The enemy came
to meet us,' wrote Turenne, in the evening, to his wife; 'they were
beaten, God be praised!  I have worked rather hard all day; I wish you
good night, and am going to bed.'  Ten days afterwards, on the 23d of
June, 1658, the garrison of Dunkerque was exhausted; the aged governor,
the Marquis of Leyden, had been mortally wounded in a sortie; the place
surrendered, and, the next day but one, Louis XIV. entered it, but merely
to hand it over at once to the English.  'Though the court and the army
are in despair at the notion of letting go what he calls a rather nice
morsel,' wrote Lockhart, the day before, to Secretary Thurloe,
'nevertheless the cardinal is staunch to his promises, and seems as well
satisfied at giving up this place to his Highness as I am to take it.
The king, also, is extremely polite and obliging, and he has in his soul
more honesty than I had supposed.'"

The surrender of Dunkerque was soon followed by that of Gravelines and
several other towns; the great blow against the Spanish arms had been
struck; negotiations were beginning; tranquillity reigned everywhere in
France; the Parliament had caused no talk since the 20th of March, 1655,
when, they having refused to enregister certain financial edicts, for
want of liberty of suffrage, the king, setting out from the castle of
Vincennes, "had arrived early at the Palace of Justice, in scarlet jacket
and gray hat, attended by all his court in the same costume, as if he
were going to hunt the stag, which was unwonted up to that day.  When he
was in his bed of justice, he prohibited the Parliament from assembling,
and, after having said a word or two, he rose and went out, without
listening to any address." [_Memoires de Montglat,_ t. ii.]  The
sovereign courts had learned to improve upon the old maxim of Matthew
Mole: "I am going to court; I shall tell the truth; after which the king
must be obeyed."  Not a tongue wagged, and obedience at length was
rendered to Cardinal Mazarin as it had but lately been to Cardinal
Richelieu.

The court was taking its diversion.  "There were plenty of fine comedies
and ballets going on.  The king, who danced very well, liked them
extremely," says Mdlle. de Montpensier, at that time exiled from Paris;
"all this did not affect me at all; I thought that I should see enough of
it on my return; but my ladies were different, and nothing could equal
their vexation at not being in all these gayeties."  It was still worse
when announcement was made of the arrival of Queen Christina of Sweden,
that celebrated princess, who had reigned from the time she was six years
old, and had lately abdicated, in 1654, in favor of her cousin, Charles
Gustavus, in order to regain her liberty, she said, but perhaps, also,
because she found herself confronted by the ever-increasing opposition of
the grandees of her kingdom, hostile to the foreign fashions favored by
the queen, as well as to the design that was attributed to her of
becoming converted to Catholicism.  When Christina arrived at Paris, in
1656, she had already accomplished her abjuration at Brussels, without
assigning her motives for it to anybody.  "Those who talk of them know
nothing about them," she would say; "and she who knows something about
them has never talked of them."  There was great curiosity at Paris to
see this queen.  The king sent the Duke of Guise to meet her, and he
wrote to one of his friends as follows:

"She is not tall, she has a good arm, a hand white and well made, but
rather a man's than a woman's, a high shoulder,--a defect which she
so well conceals by the singularity of her dress, her walk, and her
gestures, that you might make a bet about it.  Her face is large without
being defective, all her features are the same and strongly marked, a
pretty tolerable turn of countenance, set off by a very singular
head-dress; that is, a man's wig, very big, and very much raised in
front; the top of the head is a tissue of hair, and the back has
something of a woman's style of head-dress.  Sometimes she also wears a
hat; her bodice, laced behind, crosswise, is made something like our
doublets, her chemise bulging out all round her petticoat, which she
wears rather badly fastened and not over straight.  She is always very
much powdered, with a good deal of pomade, and almost never puts on
gloves.  She has, at the very least, as much swagger and haughtiness as
the great Gustavus, her father, can have had; she is mighty civil and
coaxing, speaks eight languages, and principally French, as if she had
been born in Paris.  She knows as much about it as all our Academy and
the Sorbonne put together, has an admirable knowledge of painting as well
as of everything else, and knows all the intrigues of our court better
than I.  In fact, she is quite an extraordinary person."  "The king,
though very timid at that time," says Madame de Motteville, "and not at
all well informed, got on so well with this bold, well-informed, and
haughty princess, that, from the first moment, they associated together
with much freedom and pleasure on both sides.  It was difficult, when you
had once had a good opportunity of seeing her, and above all of listening
to her, not to forgive all her irregularities, though some of them were
highly blamable."  All the court and all Paris made a great fuss about
this queen, who insisted upon going everywhere, even to the French
Academy, where no woman had ever been admitted.  Patru thus relates to
one of his friends the story of her visit: "No notice was given until
about eight or nine in the morning of this princess's purpose, so that
some of our body could not receive information in time.  M. de Gombault
came without having been advertised; but, as soon as he knew of the
queen's purpose, he went away again, for thou must know that he is wroth
with her because, he having written some verses in which he praised the
great Gustavus, she did not write to him, she who, as thou knowest, has
written to a hundred impertinent apes.  I might complain, with far more
reason; but, so long as kings, queens, princes, and princesses do me only
that sort of harm, I shall never complain.  The chancellor [Seguier, at
whose house the Academy met] had forgotten to have the portrait of this
princess, which she had given to the society, placed in the room; which,
in my opinion, ought not to have been forgotten.  Word was brought that
the carriage was entering the court-yard.  The chancellor, followed by
the whole body, went to receive the princess.  .  .  .  As soon as she
entered the room, she went off-hand, according to her habit, and sat down
in her chair; and, at the same moment, without any order given us, we
also sat down.  The princess, seeing that we were at some little distance
from the table, told us that we could draw up close to it.  There was
some little drawing up, but not as if it were a dinner-party.  .  .  .
Several pieces were read; and then the director, who was M. de la
Chambre, told the queen that the ordinary exercise of the society was to
work at the Dictionary, and that, if it were agreeable to her Majesty, a
sheet should be read.  'By all means,' said she.  M. de Mezeray,
accordingly, read the word Jeux, under which, amongst other proverbial
expressions, there was, _'Jeux de princes, qui ne plaisent qu'a ceux qui
les font.' (Princes' jokes, which amuse only those who make them.)_  She
burst out laughing.  The word, which was in fair copy, was finished.  It
would have been better to read a word which had to be weeded, because
then we should all have spoken; but people were taken by surprise--the
French always are.  .  .  .  After about an hour, the princess rose, made
a courtesy to the company, and went away as she had come.  Here is really
what passed at this famous interview, which, no doubt, does great honor
to the Academy.--The Duke of Anjou talks of coming to it, and the zealous
are quite transported with this bit of glory."  [_OEuvres diverses de
Patru,_ t. ii.  p. 512.]

Queen Christina returned the next year and passed some time at
Fontainebleau.  It was there, in a gallery that King Louis Philippe
caused to be turned into apartments, which M. Guizot at one time
occupied, that she had her first equerry, Monaldeschi, whom she accused
of having betrayed her, assassinated almost before her own eyes; and she
considered it astonishing, and very bad taste, that the court of France
should be shocked at such an execution.  "This barbarous princess," says
Madame de Motteville, "after so cruel an action as that, remained in her
room laughing and chatting as easily as if she had done something of no
consequence or very praiseworthy.  The queen-mother, a perfect Christian,
who had met with so many enemies whom she might have punished, but who
had received from her nothing but marks of kindness, was scandalized by
it.  The king and Monsieur blamed her, and the minister, who was not a
cruel man, was astounded."

The queen-mother had other reasons for being less satisfied than she had
been at the first trip of Queen Christina of Sweden.  The young king
testified much inclination for Mary de Mancini, Cardinal Mazarin's niece,
a bold and impassioned creature, whose sister Olympia had already found
favor in his eyes before her marriage with the Count of Soissons.  The
eldest of all had married the Duke of Mercceur, son of the Duke of
Vendome; the other two were destined to be united, at a later period, to
the Dukes of Bouillon and La Meilleraye; the hopes of Mary went still
higher; relying on the love of young Louis XIV., she dared to dream of
the throne; and the Queen of Sweden encouraged her.  "The right thing is
to marry one's love," she told the king.  No time was lost in letting
Christina understand that she could not remain long in France: the
cardinal, "with a moderation for which he cannot be sufficiently
commended," says Madame de Motteville, "himself put obstacles in the way
of his niece's ambitious designs; he sent her to the convent of Brouage,
threatening, if that exile were not sufficient, to leave France and take
his niece with him."

"No power," he said to the king, "can wrest from me the free authority of
disposal which God and the laws give me over my family."  "You are king;
you weep; and yet I am going away!" said the young girl to her royal
lover, who let her go.  Mary de Mancini was mistaken; he was not yet
King.

[Illustration: Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin----394]

Cardinal Mazarin and the queen had other views regarding the marriage of
Louis XIV.; for a long time past the object of their labors had been to
terminate the war by an alliance with Spain.  The Infanta, Maria Theresa,
was no longer heiress to the crown, for King Philip at last had a son;
Spain was exhausted by long-continued efforts, and dismayed by the checks
received in the, campaign of 1658; the alliance of the Rhine, recently
concluded at Frankfurt between the two leagues, Catholic and Protestant,
confirmed immutably the advantages which the treaty of Westphalia had
secured to France.  The electors had just raised to the head of the
empire young Leopold I., on the death of his father, Ferdinand III., and
they proposed their mediation between France and Spain.  Whilst King
Philip IV. was still hesitating, Mazarin took a step in another
direction; the king set out for Lyons, accompanied by his mother and his
minister, to go and see Princess Margaret of Savoy, who had been proposed
to him a long time ago as his wife.  He was pleased with her, and
negotiations were already pretty far advanced, to the great displeasure
of the queen-mother, when the cardinal, on the 29th of November, 1659, in
the evening, entered Anne of Austria's room.  "He found her pensive and
melancholy, but he was all smiles. 'Good news, madam,' said he.  'Ah!'
cried the queen, 'is it to be peace?'  'More than that, Madame; I bring
your Majesty both peace and the Infanta.'"  The Spaniards had become
uneasy; and Don Antonio de Pimentel had arrived at Lyons at the same time
with the court of Savoy, bearing a letter from Philip IV. for the queen
his sister.  The Duchess of Savoy had to depart and take her daughter
with her, disappointed of her hopes; all the consolation she obtained was
a written promise that the king would marry Princess Margaret, if the
marriage with the Infanta were not accomplished within a year.

The year had not yet rolled away, and the Duchess of Savoy had already
lost every atom of illusion.  Since the 13th of August, Cardinal Mazarin
had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de Haro, representing
Philip IV.  The ministers had held a meeting in the middle of the
Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where a pavilion had been erected
on the boundary-line between the two states.  On the 7th of November the
peace of the Pyrenees was signed at last; it put an end to a war which
had continued for twenty-three years, often internecine, always
burdensome, and which had ruined the finances of the two countries.
France was the gainer of Artois and Roussillon, and of several places in
Flanders, Hainault, and Luxembourg; and the peace of Westphalia was
recognized by Spain, to whom France restored all that she held in
Catalonia and in Franche-Comte.  Philip IV. had refused to include
Portugal in the treaty.  The Infanta received as dowry five hundred
thousand gold crowns, and renounced all her rights to the throne of
Spain; the Prince of  Conde was taken back to favor by the king, and
declared that he would fain redeem with his blood all the hostilities he
had committed in and out of France.  The king restored him to all his
honors and dignities, gave him the government of Burgundy, and bestowed
on his son, the Duke of Enghien, the office of Grand Master of France.
The honor of the King of Spain was saved, he did not abandon his allies,
and he made a great match for his daughter.  But the eyes of Europe were
not blinded; it was France that triumphed; the policy of Cardinal
Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin was everywhere successful.  The work of
Henry IV. was completed, the house of Austria was humiliated and
vanquished in both its branches; the man who had concluded the peace of
Westphalia and the peace of the Pyrenees had a right to say, "I am more
French in heart than in speech."

The Prince of Conde returned to court, "as if he had never gone away,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier.  [_Memoires,_ t. iii.  p. 451.]  "The king
talked familiarly with him of all that he had done both in France and in
Flanders, and that with as much gusto as if all those things had taken
place for his service."  "The prince discovered him to be so great in
every point that, from the first moment at which he could approach him,
he comprehended, as it appeared, that the time had come to humble
himself.  That genius for sovereignty and command which God had implanted
in the king, and which was beginning to show itself, persuaded the Prince
of Conde that all which remained of the previous reign was about to be
annihilated."  [_Memoires de Madame de Motteville,_ t. v.  p. 39.]  From
that day King Louis XIV. had no more submissive subject than the great
Conde.

The court was in the South, travelling from town to town, pending the
arrival of the dispensations from Rome.  On the 3d of June, 1660, Don
Louis de Haro, in the name of the King of France, espoused the Infanta in
the church of Fontfrabia.  Mdlle. de Montpensier made up her mind to be
present, unknown to anybody, at the ceremony.  When it was over, the new
queen, knowing that the king's cousin was there, went up to her, saying,
"I should like to embrace this fair unknown," and led her away to her
room, chatting about everything, but pretending not to know her.  The
queen-mother and King Philip IV. met next day, on the Island of
Pheasants, after forty-five years' separation.  The king had come
privately to have a view of the Infanta, and he watched her, through a
door ajar, towering a whole head above the courtiers.  "May I, ask my
niece what she thinks of this unknown?" said Anne of Austria to her
brother.  "It will be time when she has passed that door," replied the
king.  Young Monsieur, the king's brother, leaned forward towards his
sister-in-law, and, "What does your Majesty think of this door?" he
whispered.  "I think it very nice and handsome," answered the young
queen.  The king had thought her handsome, "despite the ugliness of her
head-dress and of her clothes, which had at first taken him by surprise."
King Philip IV. kept looking at M. de Turenne, who had accompanied the
king.  "That man has given me dreadful times," he repeated twice or
thrice.  "You can judge whether M. de Turenne felt himself offended,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier.  The definitive marriage took place at
Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the 9th of June, and the court took the road
leisurely back to Vincennes.  Scarcely had the arrival taken place, when
all the sovereign bodies sent a solemn deputation to pay their respects
to Cardinal Mazarin and thank him for the peace he had just concluded.
It was an unprecedented honor, paid to a minister upon whose head the
Parliament had but lately set a price.  The cardinal's triumph was as
complete at home as abroad; all foes had been reduced to submission or
silence, Paris and France rejoicing over the peace and the king's
marriage; but, like Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin succumbed at the very
pinnacle of his glory and power; the gout, to which he was subject, flew
to his stomach, and he suffered excruciating agonies.  One day, when the
king came to get his advice upon a certain matter, "Sir," said the
cardinal, "you are asking counsel of a man who no longer has his reason
and who raves."  He saw the approach of death calmly, but not
unregretfully.  Concealed, one day, behind a curtain in the new
apartments of the Mazarin Palace (now the National Library), young
Brienne heard the cardinal coming.  "He dragged his slippers along like a
man very languid and just recovering from some serious illness.  He
paused at every step, for he was very feeble; he fixed his gaze first on
one side and then on the other, and letting his eyes wander over the
magnificent objects of art he had been all his life collecting, he said,
'All that must be left behind!'  And, turning round, he added, 'And that
too!  What trouble I have had to obtain all these things!  I shall never
see them more where I am going.'"  He had himself removed to Vincennes,
of which he was governor.  There he continued to regulate all the affairs
of state, striving to initiate the young king in the government.
"Nobody," Turenne used to say, "works so much as the cardinal, or
discovers so many expedients with great clearness of mind for the
terminating of much business of different sorts."  The dying minister
recommended to the king MM. Le Tellier and de Lionne, and he added, "Sir,
to you I owe everything; but I consider that I to some extent acquit
myself of my obligation to your Majesty by giving you M. Colbert."  The
cardinal, uneasy about the large possessions he left, had found a way of
securing them to his heirs by making, during his lifetime, a gift of the
whole of them to the king.  Louis XIV. at once returned it.  The minister
had lately placed his two nieces, the Princess of Conti and the Countess
of Soissons, at the head of the household of two queens; he had married
his niece, Hortensia Mancini, to the Duke of La Meilleraye, who took the
title of Duke of Mazarin.  The father of this duke was the relative and
protege of Cardinal Richelieu, for whom Mazarin had always preserved a
feeling of great gratitude.  It was to him and his wife that he left the
remainder of his vast possessions, after having distributed amongst all
his relatives liberal bequests to an enormous amount.  The pictures and
jewels went to the king, to Monsieur, and to the queens.  A considerable
sum was employed for the foundation and endowment of the _College des
Quatre Nations (now the Palais de l'Institut),_ intended for the
education of sixty children of the four provinces re-united to France by
the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, Alsace, Roussillon, Artois,
and Pignerol.  The cardinal's fortune was estimated at fifty millions.

Mazarin had scarcely finished making his final dispositions when his
malady increased to a violent pitch.  "On the 5th of March, forty hours'
public prayers were ordered in all the churches of Paris, which is not
generally done except in the case of kings," says Madame de Motteville.
The cardinal had sent for M. Jolt, parish-priest of St. Nicholas des
Champs, a man of great reputation for piety, and begged him not to leave
him.  "I have misgivings about not being sufficiently afraid of death,"
he said to his confessor.  He felt his own pulse himself, muttering quite
low, "I shall have a great deal more to suffer."  The king had left him
on the 7th of March, in the evening.  He did not see him again and sent
to summon the ministers.  Already the living was taking the place of the
dying, with a commencement of pomp and circumstance which excited wonder
at the changes of the world.  "On the 9th, between two and three in the
morning, Mazarin raised himself slightly in his bed, praying to God and
suffering greatly; then he said aloud, 'Ah holy Virgin, have pity upon
me; receive my soul,' and so he expired, showing a fair front to death up
to the last moment."  The queen-mother had left her room for the last
two, days, because it was too near that of the dying man.  "She wept less
than the king," says Madame de Motteville, "being more disgusted with the
creatures of his making by reason of the knowledge she had of their
imperfections, insomuch that it was soon easy to see that the defects of
the dead man would before long appear to her greater than they had yet
been in her eyes, for he did not content himself with exercising
sovereign power over the whole realm, but he exercised it over the
sovereigns themselves who had given it him, not leaving them liberty to
dispose of anything of any consequence."  [_Memoires de Madame de
Motteville,_ t. v.  p. 103.]

[Illustration: Death of Mazarin.----399]

Louis XIV. was about to reign with a splendor and puissance without
precedent; his subjects were submissive and Europe at peace; he was
reaping the fruits of the labors of his grandfather Henry IV., of
Cardinal Richelieu, and of Cardinal Mazarin.  Whilst continuing the work
of Henry IV. Richelieu had rendered possible the government of Mazarin;
he had set the kingly authority on foundations so strong that the princes
of the blood themselves could not shake it.  Mazarin had destroyed party
and secured to France a glorious peace.  Great minister had succeeded
great king, and able man great minister; Italian prudence, dexterity, and
finesse had replaced the indomitable will, the incomparable judgment, and
the grandeur of view of the French priest and nobleman.  Richelieu and
Mazarin had accomplished their patriotic work: the king's turn had come.




CHAPTER XLIV.----LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS CONQUESTS. 1661-1697.

Cardinal Mazarin on his death-bed had given the young king this advice:
"Manage your affairs yourself, sir, and raise no more premier ministers
to where your bounties have placed me; I have discovered, by what I might
have done against your service, how dangerous it is for a king to put his
servants in such a position."  Mazarin knew thoroughly the king whose
birth he had seen.  "He has in him the making of four kings and one
honest man," he used to say.  Scarcely was the minister dead, when Louis
XIV. sent to summon his council: Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent
Fouquet, and Secretaries of State Le Tellier, de Lionne, Brienne,
Duplessis-Gueneguaud, and La Vrilliere.  Then, addressing the chancellor,
"Sir," said he, "I have had you assembled together with my ministers and
my secretaries of state to tell you that until now I have been well
pleased to leave my affairs to be governed by the late cardinal; it is
time that I should govern them myself; you will aid me with your counsels
when I ask for them.  Beyond the general business of the seal, in which
I do not intend to make any alteration, I beg and command you,
Mr. Chancellor, to put the seal of authority to nothing without my orders
and without having spoken to me thereof, unless a secretary of state
shall bring them to you on my behalf.  .  .  .  And for you, gentlemen,"
addressing the secretaries of state, "I warn you not to sign anything,
even a safety-warrant or passport, without my command, to report every
day to me personally, and to favor nobody in your monthly rolls.  Mr.
Superintendent, I have explained to you my intentions; I beg that you
will employ the services of M. Colbert, whom the late cardinal
recommended to me."

The king's councillors were men of experience; and they, all recognized
the master's tone.  From timidity or respect, Louis XIV. had tolerated
the yoke of Mazarin, not, however, without impatience and in expectation
of his own turn.  [_Portraits de la Cour, Archives curieuses,_ t. viii.
p. 371.]  "The cardinal," said he one day, "does just as he pleases, and
I put up with it because of the good service he has rendered me, but I
shall be master in my turn;" and he added, "the king my grandfather did
great things, and left some to do; if God gives me grace to live twenty
years longer, perhaps I may do as much or more."  God was to grant Louis
XIV. more time and power than he asked for, but it was Henry IV.'s good
fortune to maintain his greatness at the sword's point, without ever
having leisure to become intoxicated with it.  Absolute power is in its
nature so unwholesome and dangerous that the strongest mind cannot always
withstand it.  It was Louis XIV.'s misfortune to be king for seventy-two
years, and to reign fifty-six as sovereign master.

"Many people made up their minds," says the king in his _Memoires_
[t. ii.  p. 392], "that my assiduity in work was but a heat which would
soon cool; but time showed them what to think of it, for they saw me
constantly going on in the same way, wishing to be informed of all that
took place, listening to the prayers and complaints of my meanest
subjects, knowing the number of my troops and the condition of my
fortresses, treating directly with foreign ministers, receiving
despatches, making in person part of the replies and giving my
secretaries the substance of the others, regulating the receipts and
expenditures of my kingdom, having reports made to myself in person
by those who were in important offices, keeping my affairs secret,
distributing graces according to my own choice, reserving to myself alone
all my authority, and confining those who served me to a modest position
very far from the elevation of premier ministers."

The young king, from the first, regulated his life and his time: "I laid
it down as a law to myself," he says in his _Instructions au Dauphin,_
"to work regularly twice a day.  I cannot tell you what fruit I reaped
immediately after this resolution.  I felt myself rising as it were both
in mind and courage; I found myself quite another being; I discovered in
myself what I had no idea of, and I joyfully reproached myself for having
been so long ignorant of it.  Then it dawned upon me that I was king, and
was born to be."

A taste for order and regularity was natural to Louis XIV., and he soon
made it apparent in his councils.  "Under Cardinal Mazarin, there was
literally nothing but disorder and confusion; he had the council held
whilst he was being shaved and dressed, without ever giving anybody a
seat, not even the chancellor or Marshal Villeroy, and he was often
chattering with his linnet and his monkey all the time he was being
talked to about business.  After Mazarin's death the king's council
assumed a more decent form.  The king alone was seated, all the others
remained standing, the chancellor leaned against the bedrail, and M. de
Lionne upon the edge of the chimney-piece.  He who was making a report
placed himself opposite the king, and, if he had to write, sat down on a
stool which was at the end of the table where there was a writing-desk
and paper."  [_Histoire de France,_ by Le P.  Daniel, t. xvi.  p. 89.] "
I will settle this matter with your Majesty's ministers," said the
Portuguese ambassador one day to the young king.  "I have no ministers,
Mr. Ambassador," replied Louis XIV.; "you mean to say my men of
business."

Long habituation to the office of king was not destined to wear out, to
exhaust, the youthful ardor of King Louis XIV.  He had been for a long
while governing, when he wrote, "You must not imagine, my son, that
affairs of state are like those obscure and thorny passages in the
sciences which you will perhaps have found fatiguing, at which the mind
strives to raise itself, by an effort, beyond itself, and which repel us
quite as much by their, at any rate apparent, uselessness as by their
difficulty.  The function of kings consists principally in leaving good
sense to act, which always acts naturally without any trouble.  All that
is most necessary in this kind of work is at the same time agreeable; for
it is, in a word, my son, to keep an open eye over all the world, to be
continually learning news from all the provinces and all nations, the
secrets of all courts, the temper and the foible of all foreign princes
and ministers, to be informed about an infinite number of things of which
we are supposed to be ignorant, to see in our own circle that which is
most carefully hidden from us, to discover the most distant views of our
own courtiers and their most darkly cherished interests which come to us
through contrary interests, and, in fact, I know not what other pleasure
we would not give up for this, even if it were curiosity alone that
caused us to feel it."  [_Memoires de Louis XIV.,_ t. ii.  p. 428.]

At twenty-two years of age, no more than during the rest of his life, was
Louis XIV. disposed to sacrifice business to pleasure, but he did not
sacrifice pleasure to business.  It was on a taste so natural to a young
prince, for the first time free to do as he pleased, that Superintendent
Fouquet counted to increase his influence and probably his power with the
king.  "The attorney-general [Fouquet was attorney-general in the
Parliament of Paris], though a great thief, will remain master of the
others," the queen-mother had said to Madame de Motteville at the time of
Mazarin's death.  Fouquet's hopes led him to think of nothing less than
to take the minister's place.

[Illustration: Fouquet----404]

Fouquet, who was born in 1615, and had been superintendent of finance in
conjunction with Servien since 1655, had been in sole possession of that
office since the death of his colleague in 1659.  He had faithfully
served Cardinal Mazarin through the troubles of the Fronde.  The latter
had kept him in power in spite of numerous accusations of malversation
and extravagance.  Fouquet, however, was not certain of the cardinal's
good faith; he bought Belle-Ile to secure for himself a retreat, and
prepared, for his personal defence, a mad project which was destined
subsequently to be his ruin.  From the commencement of his reign, the
counsels of Mazarin on his death-bed, the suggestions of Colbert, the
first observations made by the king himself, irrevocably ruined Fouquet
in the mind of the young monarch.  Whilst the superintendent was dreaming
of the ministry and his friends calling him _the Future,_ when he was
preparing, in his castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte, an entertainment in the
king's honor at a cost of forty thousand crowns, Louis XIV., in concert
with Colbert, had resolved upon his ruin.  The form of trial was decided
upon.  The king did not want to have any trouble with the Parliament; and
Colbert suggested to Fouquet the idea of ridding himself of his office of
attorney-general.  Achille de Harlay bought it for fourteen hundred
thousand livres; a million in ready money was remitted to the king for
his Majesty's urgent necessities; the superintendent was buying up
everybody, even the king.

[Illustration: Colbert----405]

On the 17th of August, 1661, the whole court thronged the gardens of
Vaux, designed by Le Netre; the king, whilst admiring the pictures of Le
Brun, the _Facheux_ of Moliere represented that day for the first time,
and the gold and silver plate which encumbered the tables, felt his
inward wrath redoubled.  "Ah!  Madame," he said to the queen his mother,
"shall not we make all these fellows disgorge?"  He would have had the
superintendent arrested in the very midst of those festivities, the very
splendor of which was an accusation against him.  Anne of Austria,
inclined in her heart to be indulgent towards Fouquet, restrained him.
"Such a deed would scarcely be to your honor, my son," she said;
"everybody can see that this poor man is ruining himself to give you good
cheer, and you would have him arrested in his own house!"

[Illustration: Vaux le Vicomte----405a]

"I put off the execution of my design," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires,
"which caused me incredible pain, for I saw that during that time he was
practising new devices to rob me.  You can imagine that at the age I then
was it required my reason to make a great effort against my feelings in
order to act with so much self-control.  All France commended especially
the secrecy with which I had for three or four months kept a resolution
of that sort, particularly as it concerned a man who had such special
access to me, who had dealings with all that approached me, who received
information from within and from without the kingdom, and who, of
himself, must have been led by the voice of his own conscience to
apprehend everything."  Fouquet apprehended and became reassured by
turns; the king, he said, had forgiven him all the disorder which the
troubles of the times and the absolute will of Mazarin had possibly
caused in the finances.  However, he was anxious when he followed Louis
XIV. to Nantes, the king being about to hold an assembly of the states of
Brittany.  "Nantes, Belle-Ile!  Nantes, Belle-Ile!" he kept repeating.
On arriving, Fouquet was ill and trembled as if he had the ague; he did
not present himself to the king.

On the 5th of September, in the evening, the king himself wrote to the
queen-mother: "My dear mother, I wrote you word this morning about the
execution of the orders I had given to have the superintendent arrested;
you know that I have had this matter for a long while on my mind, but it
was impossible to act sooner, because I wanted him first of all to have
thirty thousand crowns paid in for the marine, and because, moreover, it
was necessary to see to various matters which could not be done in a day;
and you cannot imagine the difficulty I had in merely finding means of
speaking in private to D'Artagnan.  I felt the greatest impatience in the
world to get it over, there being nothing else to detain me in this
district.

[Illustration: Louis XIV. dismissing Fouquet----407]

At last, this morning, the superintendent having come to work with me as
usual, I talked to him first of one matter and then of another, and made
a show of searching for papers, until, out of the window of my closet, I
saw D'Artagnan in the castle-yard; and then I dismissed the