tended hand, Mazarin was all but victorious over all it only strengthened the ties | Fontainebleau, or Compiègne. The intimate which united Anne and her minister, and connection, commenced in the middle of the as their insolence increased so did her year 1643, had already existed ten years at the friendship for them cool. The arrogance then lost its early vivacity. On the other commencement of this correspondence; it had of Beaufort exceeded all bounds, he abused and threatened the cardinal and grossly insulted the queen, and to bring affairs to a crisis, the cabal formed a plot for the minister's assassination. The conspiracy was detected, and on the 2nd of September 1643 Beaufort was arrested, and Madame de Chevreuse and the other leaders of the Importants banished from the court and capital. his enemies both within and without; his dangers, which had animated and sustained the queen, were dissipated. She was also obliged to express herself with a certain circumspection, her couriers running the risk of being intercepted. In fine, according to the fashion of the age, she employed a jargon only intelligible to Mazarin and herself, and of which the key has not been found, so that all which related to private affairs escapes us entirely, as there are also lines which cannot be read. Notwithstanding, however, the time, which would have deadened them, notwithstanding the circumstances which restrain expression, notwithstanding the mysterious cyphers in which they are veiled, the sentiments of Anne of Austria yet appear impressed with a profound tenderness. She sighs for Mazarin's ab-return, and impatiently endures his absence. There are words which betray the trouble of her mind and almost of her senses. It seems, too, almost impossible to misunderstand the language of an affection very different to simple friendship and an attachment purely political. It is in the last days of the month of August [says Cousin] that we must place the certain date of the declared ascendancy, public and without rivals, of Mazarin over Anne of Austria. Those attacks to which the minister had just been exposed precipitated the victory of the happy cardinal, and the day after the last nocturnal ambuscade in which he was to have perished, Mazarin was the solute master of the heart of the queen, and more powerful than Richelieu had been after the Day of Dupes. On the 19th of November she represented in council that in consequence of the indisposition of M. le Cardinal Mazarin, and of his being obliged, with great pain, to pass daily across the garden of the Palais Royal, and seeing that at all hours he had new affairs to communicate to her, she found it necessary to give him accommodation in the Palais Royal in order that she might conveniently converse with him upon affairs.* From that time he was only an occasional visitor to his own magnificent resi dence. The National Library [to again quote Victor Cousin] contains, enclosed in a chest, called the chest of St.-Esprit, numbered upon the back 117,826, divers papers relative to Mazarin, among which are some letters under this title, "Lettres originales de la propre main de la Reyne Anne, mère du Roy Louis XIV., au Cardinal Mazarin." The authenticity of these letters cannot be for a moment contested; we undoubtedly recognize in them the hand of Anne of Austria, her bad writing and bad orthography. There are eleven letters, all autograph. It seems that formerly there must have been more, from the great space of time over which these letters extend, from 1653 to 1658, and we know that during those five years the queen and the minister were several times separated, and would have much to write about. The first of these letters is at the end of 1652 or the commencement of 1653, when Mazarin with Louis the Fourteenth was with the army, and Anne of Austria remained in the centre of the government, at Paris, The Princess Palatine, many years afterwards, used to point out the secret passage by which Mazarin gained access to the queen's chamber. I have not space to present extracts from these eleven letters, which the reader may consult himself in the appendix, pp. 471482, of Victor Cousin's "Madame de Hautefort;" but will give instead a letter that speaks volumes, and which M. Valckenaer has subjoined to his "Mémoires sur Madame de Sévigné," the original of which he asserts to be in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Saintes, June 1660. Your letter has given me great joy. I do not know if I shall be happy enough to make you believe it, and if I could believe that one of my letters would have pleased you as much I would have written it with a good heart, and it is true that to see the transports with which they were received and read brought strongly to mind another time of which I am almost always thinking. Although you may believe or doubt, I assure you that all my life shall be employed to testify to you that there never was a friendship more true than mine, and if you do not believe it, I hope in justice that you will some day repent of having doubted it; and if I could as easily make you see my heart as what I write upon this paper, I am assured you would be content, or you would be the most ungrateful man in the world, and that I do not believe. The licentious press of the Fronde period teemed with scandals against the queen and her favourite; several pamphlets more than hint that there had been young Condé had crushed the power of a marriage between them, and one or two | regency." Never, even during the reign even go so far as to name the priest who of Richelieu, had France held so domiperformed the ceremony.* Michelet fa- nant a position in Europe. At Rocroi the vours this supposition; nor does it appear at all improbable that Anne of Austria, who was much of a devotee, should have resorted to such a means of quieting her conscience, more especially as, according to all the memoirs of the period, she had more than once been taken to task by the religious sisterhoods whom she was constantly in the habit of visiting. It will be objected that Mazarin, being a churchman, could not marry, but it is extremely doubtful whether he was ever ordained a priest, at least he never officiated as one. Whatever might have been the rela-rin had sought by clemency and a humiltions which subsisted between queen and minister, it is certain that his control over her, the young king, and the government of the nation, was, throughout his life, absolute. While he lived in the pomp and luxury of an eastern potentate, Louis was kept in a state of absolute penury; he was suffered to grow out of his clothes, even the sheets upon his bed were in rags, and his carriages were mouldering with age. The civil wars which desolated the capital and many of the provinces for years were wholly directed against Mazarin, and these, together with all the odium which throughout that time the nation cast upon her, might have been suppressed by dismissing him from her councils. Of his brutal rudeness towards her during the latter years of his life, and even upon his death-bed, where a scene was enacted † which can bear but one explanation, all contemporaries bear witness, and, to conclude with a most significant fact, although previously notorious as a man of intrigue, from the commencement of his close relations with Anne of Austria, not even the most scandalous pamphlet ever accused him of an amour. With the overthrow of the Importants commenced that period which is known in French history as "the fair days of the In "La Suite de Silence au bout des Doights" occurs this passage: "Why so much blame the queen for loving the cardinal? Is she not obliged to do so if they are married, and Père Vincent has ratified and approved their marriage?" "Quelques jours avant sa mort elle (la reine), elle Palla visiter pendant qu'il était au lit, et lui demanda comment il se trouvait. Très-mal,' repondit-il, et, sans dire autre chose, il jéta ses couvertures, sortit sa jambe et sa cuisse nues hors du lit, et les montrant à la reine, qui en fut fort étonné, aussi bien que tous les spectateurs: Voyez, madame,' lui dit-il, ces jambes qui ont perdu le répos en le donnant à la France! En effet, sa jambe et sa cuisse étaient si décharnées, si livides et si couvertes de taches, que cela faisait pitié. La reine jeta un grand cri et se prit à pleurer." "Mémoires de Brienne." ity of demeanour to win popular approbation, and the change from the stern and pompous Richelieu was so striking that the very contrast secured his success. But from the fall of the Importants and the consolidation of his power all this was altered. He sent for his nephews and nieces from Rome and placed them in high positions about the court; he raised a guard for the protection of his person, and began to assume a style of regal splendour; he reduced the council of state to two persons beside himself, the Prince de Condé, father of the great general, and the Duc d'Orléans, and between these he craftily sowed the seeds of dissension by opposing their interests; by the aid of cajolery, large promises, and small fulfilments, and a fostering of selfish jealousies, he contrived, for a time, to preserve perfect tranquillity, and hold the balance between all parties. De Retz gives an admirable description of this state of things in the following paragraph: – Monsieur (Orléans) thought himself above taking warning; the Prince de Condé, attached to the court by his avarice, was willing to believe so likewise; the Duc d'Enghien was just at the age to fall asleep under the shadow of his laurels; the Duc de Longueville opened his eyes, but it was only to shut them again; the Duc de Vendôme considered himself too happy only to have been exiled; the Duc de Nemours was but a child; the Duc de Guise, newly come back from Brussels, was ruled by Madame de Pons, and believed that he ruled all the court; the Duc de Bouillon fancied every day that they would give him back Sedan; Turenne was more than satisfied to command the army in Germany; the Duc d'Epernon was enchanted to have got into his post and his government; Schomberg had been all his life inseparable from everything that was well with the court; Grammont was its slave, and Messieurs de Retz, de Vitri, and de Bas But this contemptible and temporizing policy could not succeed forever. Posts promised to doubtful friends were treacherously bestowed to mollify certain enemies; no favour was granted without some pecuniary equivalent being wrung from the recipient; every man's pride was outraged by the sense of being befooled, and sullen murmurs swelled into howls of execration from every class of the community. There was no lion's hide beneath the fox's skin. Mazarin was a coward; when cunning failed him, he was lost and had to yield; he never dared to boldly dare his foes, and, conscious of his impotence, foes soon began to swarm around him in ever increasing numbers. sompierre, believed themselves to be abso- | body of troops. This oppression was lutely in favour, because they were no longer succeeded by another still worse a new either prisoners or exiles. The Parlement, and exorbitant tariff upon all articles of delivered from the Cardinal de Richelieu, who food brought into Paris. The outcry of had kept it at a very low ebb, imagined that the people aroused the spirit of the Parlethe age of gold must be that of a minister who told them every day that the queen would be ment, which had been crushed by Richelieu and cajoled by Mazarin, and it refused guided only by their counsels. to verify the edict without certain modifications. Too timid to force an open rupture, Mazarin withdrew the tariff, but through his agent Emery revived a number of ancient imposts, which, although obsolete, having been sanctioned by former Parlements, could not be rejected. Six new edicts, however, which the king placed before Parlement at the opening of of the year 1648 were so violently opposed that Mazarin, in an access of cowardly fear, yielded everything. Perceiving its own power and the weakness of the minister, the legislative assembly from that time took the upper hand, disputing even the just and reasonable demands of the government; the provincial Parlements followed the example of the metropolitan ; During "the fair days" Anne had emp- De Retz was stirring the people to revolt, tied the treasure in bestowing largesses and, to culminate the confusion, the leader upon her friends; the effects of an empty of the Importants, De Beaufort, was sufexchequer soon began to be felt: magis- fered to make his escape from Vincennes. trates, governors of towns and fortresses, Ere the disturbances assumed dangerous officers, and even soldiers were unpaid, proportions, Mazarin, the queen, together and but for loans from the commanders with the young king, contrived to get out of the army it would have been impossible of Paris and take shelter at Saint-Gerto have sustained the war then raging. main. As I have described the Fronde The finances were under the superintend- period in a previous article, I shall pass ence of Emery, a name which his contem-it over here with brief notice; indeed, poraries have sent down to posterity load- throughout that memorable struggle Mazed with execrations. Bussy Rabutin de- arin was a passive rather than an active scribes him as "harsh, proud, clever, in-person, a quintain at which all parties telligent in matters of business, ingenious in the creation of new subsidies to provide for the expenses of the war; he exercised a rigorous inquisition upon prop erty of all kinds, and was never tired of trampling upon the subjects of the king." He had a difficult task to perform, and he performed it iniquitously; he created new offices of the most extraordinary character, such as the comptroller of faggots, the criers of wine of the king's counsellors, and sold them to the highest bidders; he plundered the public funds, and granted the most infamous monopolies of public food. In 1548 there had been passed a law for limiting the growth of the capital within certain bounds, and this toisé, as it was called, he now revived, exacting from those who had built beyond the prescribed limits a heavy fine to redeem their property from demolition; the people rose in riot against the surveyors, who could carry out their orders only under the protection of a tilted; De Retz was the real hero of the civil war, and after him Condé and Beaufort, Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Longueville, played the principal parts. A full description of the innumerable and tortuous intrigues of this extraordinary revolt would fill a whole number of the magazine, would prove exceedingly dull to the general reader, and would throw very little additional light upon Mazarin's character; his policy throughout was but a repetition of that which had gone before it was false, temporizing, and cowardly. Three times was he obliged to quit Paris, and twice the kingdom, to save his life; once the Parlement declared him guilty of high treason, placed him beyond the pale of the law, and commanded all persons to put him to death wherever he might be found, offering one hundred and fifty thousand See "De Retz and the Fronde," LIVING AGE, No. 1523. ica livres for his capture alive or dead. And yet, notwithstanding, upon his return from his third and last exile, on the 29th of March 1653, he was received with every mark of enthusiastic affection; the great nobles, many of whom had been his most virulent enemies, cast themselves at his feet, and jostled each other for the distinction of being first to crouch there; a grand festival was given in his honour at the Hôtel de Ville, and the multitude gathered about the building in crowds, and rent the air with acclamations whenever he appeared at the windows. Such is the value of popular hate - and popular favour. De Retz was in prison, Condé and Beaufort were in exile, the party of the Fronde was shattered, the populace were weary of civil strife, and Mazarin still remained master of queen and king. There is something marvellous in the tenacity with which through years of discord, hatred, rebellion, and exile, this man clung to power; France could no more shake him off than could Sinbad the old man of the sea. "I and time," was a favourite expression of his, and the two certainly wrought wonders for him. He lived down all hate and all enemies, and that with little or no assistance from the headman's axe, and passed the latter years of life in tranquillity, absolute authority, and a general toleration almost amounting to popularity. This it is which has given to posterity an exaggerated estimate of his talents. His rule from first to last was a vicious and unhappy one for France, the success which attended her arms was due to her great commanders, Condé and Turenne, and these were her only offsets against the oppression, exaction, and the wretched condition of her people which marked the whole period of his administration. Nothing could be more deplorable than the management of the finances. What it was under Emery has been already referred to; Fouquet appropriated and squandered the national money with a magnificent generosity that half blinds us to his faults; it was reserved for the great Colbert to redem the crimes and errors of his predecessors. While commerce was almost extinct, the people famishing, and justice dead, Mazarin had but one thought, the aggrandisement of his power, and the increase of his enormous wealth. "Sire," said Fouquet to the king, "the exchequer is empty; but his Eminence the cardinal will lend you what you want." The magnificence of his state far surpassed that of royalty itself. When he left Paris for Spain to arrange the Treaty of the Pyrenees and the king's marriage, he took in his train sixty churchmen and nobles of the first rank, accompanied by their retinues; his household attendants were three hundred in number, besides a guard of three hundred foot and one hundred horse; his baggage was conveyed in eight waggons, each drawn by six horses; in addition to these were twenty-four mules, and a great number of led horses. His re-entrance into the capital with Louis and his bride is thus described in one of Madame Scarron's letters : The household of Cardinal Mazarin was not gage-mules, of which the first twenty-four had the ugliest. It began with seventy-two baghousings, simple enough; the others had more beautiful, finer, and more brilliant housings than the finest tapestries you have ever seen. The last were of red velvet with gold and silver embroidery, and silver bits and bells, all of such magnificence as caused great exclamations. Then passed twenty-four pages, and all the gentlemen and officers of his household; after that, twelve carriages with six household was more than an hour in passing. horses each, and his guards. In short, his Although usually grasping and avaricious, Mazarin could be magnificent at times. It is related that at one of his great fêtes he led his guests through a suite of apartments, in which they were shown furniture, mirrors, cabinets, candelabras, plate, jewels, and other costly articles worth five hundred thousand francs, and that when they had done admiring these riches, he informed them that he intended to put them all into a lottery for which each person should be presented with a ticket. The means by which he had accumulated his riches were various, and mostly base sales of offices, fines, peculations, gambling, plunder of all kinds. Gambling was the all-pervading vice of the age, and the especial favourite of the minister, who, probably, to draw men's minds from State affairs, carefully fostered and encouraged it at court. The king was early initiated into the custom, and staked and lost the little money he was allowed most royally in the cardinal's or Madame de Soisson's salons. Every mansion was a gaminghouse, where scores of thousands of francs were lost and won every few minutes. From the court the passion descended to the city, and spread universal corruption. Nevertheless, Mazarin did much to soften and polish the manners of the nobility, rendered rude and savage by generations of civil war. He introduced a taste for music, and brought singers and operas from Italy. Until his time the royal orchestra was limited to violins; he brought into use various other instruments till then unknown in France. Dancing was also greatly cultivated, and the ballet, which assumed such magnificent proportions during Louis the Fourteenth's reign, became a principal entertainment in all the court festivities. In fine, he initiated all the luxury, splendour, and refinement which ultimately degenerated into the sybaritism that distinguished the second half of the seventeenth century. In the mean time he carefully excluded the young king from all State affairs, inclining him to frivolous and vicious pursuits, keeping from him all good books, and diverting his mind from all studies of an ennobling character, or which would instruct him in the art of government. In consequence of this training, the future Augustus grew up very ill-educated. La Porte, who was the king's personal attendant during his boyhood, has, in addition to this, brought an accusation against the cardinal too terrible to be repeated in these pages, the veracity of which is seemingly confirmed by the fact that, although banished on account of the assertion during Mazarin's lifetime, he was afterwards recalled and taken into favour, which would scarcely have come to pass had his story been false. After all, there must have been something truly great in Louis' nature that it could emerge so well from such a training. as being positively ugly, after a time usurped her place in the king's affections; and took a far firmer hold upon them than Olympia had ever possessed. She reciprocated his tenderness with an all-absorbing passion. Madame de Motteville relates that Mazarin actually entertained the idea of raising his niece to the throne. "I very much fear," he said to the queen one day, "that the king too greatly desires to espouse my niece." The queen, who knew her minister, comprehending that he desired what he feigned to fear, replied haughtily, "If the king were capable of such an indignity, I would put my second son at the head of the whole nation against the king and against you.” Mazarin [writes Voltaire] never pardoned, it is said, that response of the queen, but he adopted the wise plan of thinking with her; he assumed honour and merit in opposing the passion of Louis the Fourteenth. His power had no need of a queen of the blood for its support; he feared even the character of his niece; and he believed that he strengthened the power of his ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his house to too great a height. Mazarin now resolved to at once remove Marie from the court; upon his declaring this intention, and forbidding any further intercourse between her and the king, her grief and despair was so heart-rending that Louis offered to break off the marriage then negotiating with the Infanta, and make her his queen. How admirably the wily cardinal could act a Mazarin had married one niece to the noble and self-denying part, is manifest Prince de Conti, and a second to the Duc in the reply he made to this offer: "Havde Mercœur; two others, Marie and ing been chosen by the late king, your Olympia Mancini, were unmarried; these father, and since then by the queen, your the cardinal kept at court, and threw con- mother, to assist you by my councils, and stantly into the young monarch's society. having served you up to this moment with Madame de Motteville tells us, when Olym- inviolable fidelity, far be it from me to pia first arrived in France, she was re- misemploy the knowledge of your weakmarkably plain, but as she grew to woman-ness, which you have given me, and the hood a great improvement took place in authority in your dominions which you her personal appearance. He eyes were have bestowed upon me, and suffer you to always fine, but from being exceedingly do a thing so contrary to your dignity! I thin, she became plump; her colour was am the master of my niece, and would high, but delicate; her cheeks were dim- sooner stab her with my own hand than pled; her hands and feet small and exceed- elevate her by so great a treachery." In ingly beautiful, and she possessed wit, two of his letters he threatened the king talents, and grace. Such charms, thrown with resigning his office, and quitting constantly in his way, could not fail to France forever, unless he relinquished all make some impression upon the heart of a thoughts of his niece. There are historiboy of seventeen. They read, sat, talked, cal writers who have held these heroic danced together, and Louis studied Ital- effusions to be the expression of his real ian for the express purpose of conversing sentiments, and have praised them acwith her in her own language. But the cordingly; but such a judgment is in impression was not lasting; a rival, her direct contradiction of the whole life of own sister, Marie, who has been described the man. He who could systematically |