Peace restored, Louis became joyful; he could not refuse his favourite anything. Cinq-Mars made the most of his opportunity. But he could not go far; the Cardinal barred his way. Cinq-Mars aspired to the peerage; he aimed to be a duke, to marry a princess, and to sit among the King's counsellors. Richelieu checked him, gave him rude orders, scolded him as he scolded his valet, called him an "insolent little fellow," and threatened to put him in a place "still lower" than the place from which he had raised him.[81] One day, when Richelieu was berating the favourite, he told him that he had appointed him to his office in the King's house so that he (Richelieu) might have a reliable spy, and that as he had been appointed for no other purpose, it would be advisable for him to begin to do the work that he was expected to do.

The revelation was a cruel blow to the proud and sensitive boy, and in the first moment of his anguish he conceived a ferocious hatred. It is probable that the knowledge that the Cardinal had placed him near the King's person against his will and in spite of his long and determined resistance solely to the end that he might be degraded to an ignoble office was the first cause of the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.

De Richelieu's ministry had never appeared more impregnable than it appeared at that time. Far and near its policy had been triumphant. Speaking of the position France had taken in Europe through the guidance of Richelieu, an impartial foreigner said:

What a difference between the French Government as it was when Richelieu received it from the kingdom and the state to which his efforts raised it! Before his day the Spaniards were in progress on all the frontiers; no longer advancing by impetuous attacks, but entering calmly and steadily by systematic invasion. Richelieu changed all that, and, led by him, France forced the Spaniards beyond the frontier.

Until the Cardinal assumed command the united forces of the Empire, the Catholic League and the Spanish armies, held not only the left bank of the Rhine but all the land divided by that great central artery of European life. By Richelieu's wise policy France regained dominion in Alsace and in the greater part of the Rhenish country, the armies of France took possession of central Germany, the Italian passes, which had been closed to the men of France, were opened to them, and large territories in upper Italy were seized and placed under French control; and the changes were wrought, not by a temporary invasion, but by orderly and skilfully planned campaigns.

The Cardinal's power had been made manifest everywhere. His rule had been to the glory of France. Among other important results were the triumphs of the French navies; the fleets, having proved their strength in the Ligurian Sea, had menaced the ports of Spain. The Ligurian Peninsula had been rent asunder by the revolt of two large provinces, one of which had arisen proclaiming its independent rights as a kingdom. There was, there had been, no end to Richelieu's diplomatic improvements; his victories had carried ruin to the enemy; the skirmishers of France had advanced to a point within two leagues of Madrid. The Croquemitaine of France, who held in terror both the Court and the canaille, had assured the Bourbons of an important place among the empires of the world. The day of Spain was past; the day of France was come.

A great fête marked this period of power and glory.

Richelieu was a man of many ambitions, and he aspired to the admiration of all of the population; he had extended his protecting arms over literature and the lettered; he had founded the French Academy; but he was not content; he was a man of too much independence and of too enterprising a mind to leave all the literary honours to the doctors of the law or to his mediums, Corneille and Rotrou, whose lines of work he fixed to follow a plan outlined to suit his own ideas. Usually, Richelieu's intellectual ambitions were quiescent, but at times the pedant, dormant in his hard nature, awoke and impelled him to add a few personal touches to the work of his agents. When under the influence of his afflatus he collaborated with Desmarets, the author of a dramatic poem entitled Clovis, and by the united efforts of the unique literary team the tragedy Mirame was delivered to the world. Its first appearance was a Parisian event. None of the King's armies had been mounted with such solicitude and prodigality, The grand audience-room of the Palais Cardinal was built for Mirame; it was spaced to hold three thousand spectators; the stage material had been ordered from Italy by "Sieur Mazarini," ex-Papal Nuncio at Paris. Richelieu himself had chosen the costumes and the decorations; and he in person directed the rehearsals, and, as he supposed, superintended the listing of all the invitations. The play was ready for representation early in the year (1641).

First of all there was a general rehearsal for the critics, who were represented by the men of letters and the comedians. The rehearsal took place before the Court and the social world of all Paris. The invited guests were seated by the Bishop of Chartres and by a president of the Parliament of France. Though too new and too fresh in its magnificence, the Audience Hall pleased the people exceedingly; when the curtain rose they could hardly repress cries of admiration. The stage was lined on both sides by splendid palaces and in the open space between the abodes of luxury were most delicious gardens adorned with grottoes, statues, fountains, and grand parterres of flowers descending terrace upon terrace to the sea, which lifted its waves with an agitation as natural as the movements of the real tide of a real ocean; on the broad waters passed two great fleets; one of them appeared as if two leagues away. Both fleets moved calmly on, passing like living things before the spectators.

The same decorations and scenery served the five acts of the play; but the sky was changed in each act, when the light faded, when the sun set or rose, and when the moon and the stars appeared to mark the flight of the hours. The play was composed according to the accepted formulas of the day, and it was neither better nor worse than its fellows. In its course the actors fought, poisoned each other, died, came to life, and quarrelled over a handsome princess; and while the scene-shifters manipulated the somewhat crude inventions of the stage scenery, and while the actors did their utmost to develop the plot to the best advantage, the master of the palace acted as chief of the Claque and tried by every means in his power to arouse the enthusiasm of the audience. He stood in the front of his box and, leaning forward into space, manifested his pleasure by his looks; at times he called the attention of the people and imposed silence so that the finer passages might be heard.[82]

At the end of the play a curtain representing clouds fell upon the scene, and a golden bridge rolled like a tide to the feet of Anne of Austria. The Queen arose, crossed the bridge, and found herself in a magnificent ball-room; then, with the Prince and the Princess, she danced an impetuously ardent and swinging figure, and when that dance was over, the Bishop of Chartres, in Court dress, and baton in hand, like a maître d'hôtel, led the way to a fine collation. Later in the year the serviceable Bishop was made Archbishop of Rheims.

Politics interfered with Mirame. The play was assailed by difficulties similar to those which met Napoleon's Vie de César under the Second Empire. The Opposition eagerly seized the occasion to annoy "Croquemitaine"; open protestations were circulated to the effect that the play was not worth playing. Some, rising above the question of literary merit, said that the piece was morally objectionable because it contained allusions to Anne of Austria's episode with Buckingham. Richelieu became the scapegoat of the hour; even the King had something to say regarding his Minister's literary venture. Louis was not gifted with critical discrimination; he knew it, and his timid pride and his prudence restrained him from launching into observations upon subjects with which he was not fitted to cope; but guided by the cherub detailed to protect the mentally incompetent, he struck with instinctive subtlety at the one vulnerable point in the Cardinal's armour and declared that he had nothing to say regarding the preciosity of the play, but that he had been "shocked by the questionable composition of the audience." It relieved the King's consciousness of his own inferiority to "pinch the Cardinal." He told Monsieur that he had been "shocked" when he realised "what species of society" he had been invited to meet. Monsieur, seizing the occasion to strike his enemy, answered that, to speak "frankly," he also had "been shocked" when he perceived "little Saint Amour among the Cardinal's guests." The royal brothers turned the subject in every light, and the more they studied it the darker grew its aspect. They agreed in thinking that the King's delicacy had been grossly outraged; they worked upon the fact until it assumed the proportions of a personal insult. Richelieu, visited by the indignant pair, was galvanised by the double current of their wrath. He knew that Saint Amour had not been in any earthly locality by his will; tact, if not religious prejudice, would have forbidden the admission of a personage of the doubtful savour of Saint Amour to the presence of the King. But Monsieur and the King had seen with their own eyes, and as no one would have dared to enter the Palais Cardinal uninvited, it was an undisputable fact that some one had tampered with the invitations. Richelieu's detectives were put upon the scent and they discovered that an Abbé who "could not refuse a woman anything" had been entrusted with the invitations-list.

Richelieu could not punish the amiable lady who had unconsciously sealed the Abbé's doom; but justice was wrought, and absolute ignorance of facts permits us to hope that it fell short of the justice meted out to Puylaurens. It was said that the Abbé had been sent back to his village. Wherever he was "sent," Louis XIII. refused to be comforted, and to the end of his days he told the people who surrounded him that the Cardinal had invited him to his palace to meet Saint Amour.

Richelieu's life was embittered by the incident, and to the last he was tormented by a confused impression of the fête which he had believed was to be the coming glory of his career. But an isolated detail could not alter facts, and it was universally known that his importance was "of all the colours." Mirame had given the people an idea of the versatility of Richelieu's grandeur and of the composite quality of his power, and M. le Grand knew what he might expect should he anger the Cardinal. Cinq-Mars was always at the King's heels, and he knew the extent of Louis's docility.

The Cinq-Mars Conspiracy took shape in the months which immediately followed the presentation of Mirame. As the details of the conspiracy may be found in any history, I shall say only this: When an enterprise is based upon sentiments like the King's passion for his Grand Equerry[83] and the general hatred of Richelieu, it is not necessary to search for reasonable causes.

When the first steps in the conspiracy were taken Louis XIII., in his tenderness for Cinq-Mars and his bitter jealousy of Richelieu, unconsciously played the part of instigator.

It soothed the wounded pride of the monarch to hear his tyrant ridiculed, and he incited his "dear friend," the Marquis d'Effiat, to scoff at the Cardinal. Cinq-Mars and all the others were taken red-handed; doubt was impossible. In the words of Mme. de Motteville: "It was one of the most formidable, and at the same time one of the most extraordinary plots found in history; for the King was, tacitly, the chief of the conspirators." Monsieur enthusiastically entered into the plot; he ran to the Queen with the whole story; he told her the names of the conspirators, and urged her to take part in the movement.

"It must be innocent," he insisted; "if it were not the King would not be engaged in it."[84]

Richelieu's peaceful days were over. He was restless and suspicious. Suddenly, in June, 1642, when Louis XIII. was sick in Narbonne (and when Richelieu was sick in Tarascon) M. le Grand was arrested and delivered to the Cardinal for the crime of high treason. He deserved his fate. He had led Monsieur to treat with Spain; but the real cause of his death—if not of his disgrace—lay in the fact that he had lost his hold upon the King's love.

"The King had ceased to love him," said a contemporary. The end came suddenly and without a note of warning. The King, awaking as from a dream, remembered all the services that Richelieu had rendered unto France. He was so grateful that he hastened to Tarascon and begged Richelieu's pardon for having wished "to lose him," in other words, for having wished to accomplish his fall. The King was ashamed, and despite his sickness he ordered his bearers to carry him into Richelieu's bed-chamber where the two gentlemen passed several hours together, each in his own bed, effecting a reconciliation.

But their hearts were not in their words; wrongs like those in question between the Cardinal and the King cannot be forgotten.[85] The King had abetted a conspiracy against the Cardinal's life, and had the Cardinal been inclined to forget it, the King's weak self-reproach would have kept it in the mind of his contemplated victim. Louis could not refrain from harking back to his sin; he humiliated himself, he begged the Cardinal to forgive him; he gave up everything, including the amiable young criminal who, in Scriptural language, had lain in his bosom and been to him as a daughter. The judgment of the moralist is disarmed by the fact that Louis was, and always had been, a physical wreck, morally handicapped by the essence of his being. He had loved Cinq-Mars with unreasoning passion; he was forced by circumstances to sacrifice him; but we need not pity him; there was much of the monster in him, and before the head of Cinq-Mars fell, all the King's love for his victim had passed away.

Louis XIII. was of all the sovereigns of France the one most notably devoted to the public interest; in crises his self-sacrifice resembled the heroism of the martyr; but the defects of his qualities were of such a character that he would have been incomprehensible had he not been sick in body and in mind.

During the crisis which followed the exposure of Cinq-Mars's conspiracy Monsieur surpassed himself; he was alternately trembler, liar, sniveller, and informer; his behaviour was so abject that the echoes of his shame reverberated throughout France and, penetrating the walls of the Tuileries, reached the ears of his daughter. Monsieur shocked Mademoiselle's theological conception of Princes of the Blood; she could not understand how a creature partaking of the nature of the Deity could be so essentially contemptible; she was crushed by the enigma presented by her father.

The close of the reign resembled the dramatic tragedies in which the chief characters die in the fifth act; all the principal personages departed this life within a period of a few months. Marie de Médicis was the first to go. She died at Cologne 3d July, 1642, not, as was reported, in a garret, or in a hovel, but in a house in which Rubens had lived. If we may judge by the names of her legatees, she died surrounded by at least eighty servants. It is true that she owed debts to the tradesmen who furnished her household with the necessaries of life, and it is true that her people had advanced money when their living expenses required such advances; but the two facts prove no more than that royal households in which there is no order closely resemble the disorderly households of the ordinary classes. People of respectability in our own midst are now living regardless of system, devoid of economy, and indebted to their tradesmen, as the household of Marie de Médicis lived in the seventeenth century. To the day of her death the aged Queen retained possession of silver dishes of all kinds, and had her situation justified the rumours of extreme poverty which have been circulated since then she would have pawned them or sold them. We may be permitted to trust that Marie de Médicis did not end her days tormented by material necessities. She died just at the time when she had begun to resort to expedients. The old and corpulent sovereign had lived an agitated life; her chief foes were of her own temperament. She was the victim of paroxysmal wrath and it was generally known that she had made at least one determined though unfruitful attempt to whip her husband, the heroic Henry IV., Conqueror of Paris. Her life had not been of a character to inspire the love of the French people, and when she died no one regretted her. Had not the Court been forced by the prevailing etiquette to assume mourning according to the barbarous and complicated rites of the ancient monarchy, her death would have passed unperceived. The customs of the old regimen obliged Mademoiselle to remain in a darkened room, surrounded by such draperies as were considered essential to the manifestation of royal grief. The world mourned for the handsome boy who had been forced to enter the King's house, and to act as the King's favourite against his will, to die upon the scaffold. Monsieur was despised for his part in Cinq-Mars's death. Mademoiselle was shunned because she was her father's daughter and her obligatory mourning was a convenient veil. Her own record of the death of the Queen is a frankly sorrowful statement of her appreciation of the facts in the case, and of her knowledge of her father's guilt:

I observed the retreat which my mourning imposed upon me with all possible regularity and rigour. If any one had come to see me it would not have been difficult for me to refuse to receive them; however, my case was the case of all who are undergoing misfortune; no one called for me.

Three months after the conspiracy against de Richelieu was exposed, Cinq-Mars was beheaded (12th September), and the Lyonnais, who had assembled in the golden mists of the season of the vintage to see him die, cried out against his death and said that it was "a sin against the earth to take the light from his gentle eyes." De Thou, Cinq-Mars's friend, was beheaded also. The victims faced death like tried soldiers; their attitude as they halted upon the confines of eternity elicited the commendation of the people. The fact that the people called their manner of leaving the world "beautiful and admirable" proves that simplicity in man's conduct, as in literature and in horticultural architecture, was out of date.

When the condemned were passing out of the tribunal they met the judges who had but just pronounced their sentence. Both Cinq-Mars and de Thou "embraced the judges and offered them fine compliments."

The people of Lyons—civilians and soldiers—were massed around the Court House and in the neighbourhood. Cinq-Mars and de Thou bowed low to them all, then mounted into the tumbrel, with faces illumined by spiritual exaltation. In the tumbrel they joyfully embraced and crying "Au revoir," promised to meet in Paradise. They saluted the multitude like conquerors. De Thou clapped his hands when he saw the scaffold; Cinq-Mars ascended first; he turned, took one step forward, and stopped short; his eyes rested fondly upon the people; then with a bright smile he saluted them; after they covered his head he stood for an instant poised as if to spring from earth to heaven, one foot advanced, his hand upon his side. His wide, pathetic glance embraced the multitude, then calmly and without fear, again firmly pacing the scaffold, he went forward to the block.

At the present time it is the fashion to die with less ostentation, but revolutions in taste ought not to prevent our doing justice to the victims of the Cinq-Mars Conspiracy. They were heroically brave to the last, and the people could not forget them. Mademoiselle's grief was fostered by the general sympathy for the unfortunate boy who had paid so dearly for his familiarity with the King. As all her feelings were recorded by her own hand, we are in possession of her opinions on the subjects which were of interest in her day. Of the matter of Cinq-Mars and de Thou she said:

I regretted it deeply, because of my consideration for them, and because, unfortunately, Monsieur was involved in the affair through which they perished. He was so involved that it was even believed that the single deposition made by him was the thing which weighed most heavily upon them and caused their death. The memory of it renews my grief so that I cannot say any more.

Mademoiselle was artless enough to believe that her father would be sorrowful and embarrassed when he returned.

She did not know him.

In the winter after Cinq-Mars died, Gaston returned to the Luxembourg radiant with roguish smiles; he was delighted to be in Paris.

He came to my house, [reported Mademoiselle,] he supped at my house, where there were twenty-four violins. He was as gay as if Messieurs Cinq-Mars and de Thou had not been left by the roadside. I avow that I could not see him without thinking of them, and that through all my joy of seeing him again I felt that his joy gave me grief.

Not long after she thus recorded her impressions she found, to her cost, how little reliance she could place upon her father, and all her filial illusions vanished.

Richelieu was the next to disappear from the scene. He had long been sick; his body was paralysed and putrid with abscesses and with ulcers. Master and Man, Richelieu and Louis were intently watching to see which should be the first to die. Each one of them was forming projects for a time when, freed from the arbitration of the other, he should be in a position to act his independent will and to turn the remnant of his fleeting life to pleasurable profit. In that, his final state, the Cardinal offered the people of France a last and supreme spectacle, and of all the dramas that he had shown them, it was the most original and the most impressive. The day after the execution of Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, who had remained to the last hour in Lyons, entered his portable room and set out for Paris. His journey covered a period of six weeks, and the people who ran to the highway from all directions to see him pass were well regaled. In those last days when the Cardinal travelled he was carried in procession. First of all were heavy wains hauling the material of an inclined plane; at a short distance behind the wains followed a small army corps escorting the Cardinal's travelling room; the room was always transported by twenty-four men of the Cardinal's body-guard, who marched through sun and rain with heads uncovered. In the portable room were three pieces of furniture, a chair, a table, and a splendid bed—and on the bed lay a sick man!—better still for the sightseers, a sick Cardinal! The crowds pressed close to the roadside. They who were masters of the art of death looked on disease with curiosity; they knew that they could lop off the heads of the fine lords whose grandeur embittered the lives of the peasants and the workmen as easily as they could beat down nuts from trees; yet there lay the real King of France in his doll's house, and he could neither live nor die,—that was droll!

The chair in the little room stood ready for the visitors who paid their respects to the sick man when the travellers halted.

The table was carried for the convenience of the secretary, who wrote upon it, sorted his papers, dusted his ink with scented gold-powder, and pasted great wafers over the silken floss and the English ribands which tied his private correspondence.

Richelieu, as he travelled, dictated army orders and diplomatic despatches. When the little procession arrived at a halting-place, everything was ready for its reception; the house in which the Cardinal was to lodge had been prepared, the entire floor to be occupied by him had been gutted so that no inner partitions could interfere with his progress. The wains stopped, the inclined plane was set in position against the side of the house, and the heavy machine bearing the sick-room was rolled slowly into the breach and engulfed without a tremor.

When it was possible the room was drawn aboard a boat and the Cardinal was transported by water; in that case when he reached home he was disembarked opposite his palace near the Port au Foin, and borne through the crowd of people, who struggled and crushed each other so that they might know how a Cardinal-Minister looked, lying in his bed and entering Paris, dying, yet triumphant, after he had vanquished all his enemies.

Richelieu saw all that passed; his perceptions were as keen and his judgment was as just as in the days of his vigorous manhood. Entering Paris in his bed on his return from Lyons, he saw among the prostrate courtiers of his own party a man who had been compromised by the conspiracy, and then and there he summoned him from his knees and ordered him to present himself at the palace and give an account of his actions. Richelieu's word was law; no one questioned it. The weeks which followed the return from Lyons were tedious. After the exposure of the conspiracy the Cardinal suspected every one, the King included. His tired eyes searched the corners of the King's bed-chamber for assassins. He strove to force the King to dismiss some of the officers of his guard, but at that Louis revolted.

After violent discussions and long recriminative dialogues the Cardinal resorted to heroic means. He shut himself up in his palace, refused to receive the King's ambassadors, and threatened to send in his resignation. Then the King yielded, and peace was made.

The two moribunds were together when the precautions for the national safety were taken against Gaston d'Orléans. In his declaration Louis told the deputies that he had forgiven his brother five separate and distinct times, and that he should forgive him once more and once only. The declaration made it plain that the King was firm in his determination to protect himself against his brother. Gaston was to be stripped of all power and to be deprived of the government of Auvergne; his gendarmerie and his light cavalry were to be suppressed. The King made the declaration to Mathieu Molé, December 1, 1642. That same day the Cardinal passed a desperate crisis, and it was known that he must die.

He prepared for death with the firmness befitting a man of his calibre. When his confessor asked him if he had forgiven his enemies, he answered that he had "no enemies save the enemies of the state."[86] There was some truth in the answer, and in that truth lay his title to glory. At home or abroad, in France or in foreign lands, Richelieu received the first force of every blow aimed at France. He was the Obstacle, and all hostility used him as a mark. He was the shield as well as the sword of the State. His policy was governed by two immutable ideas: 1. His own will by the will of the King; 2. France. His object was to subject all individual wills to the supreme royal will, and to develop French influence throughout Europe. We have seen the position which France had taken under his direction; he had accomplished work fully as important in the State. "The idea of monarchical power was akin to a religious dogma," said Ranke, "and he who rejected the idea expected to be pursued with the same rigour, and with nearly the same formalities, with which national justice pursued the heretic. The time for an absolute monarchy was ripe. Louis XIV. might come; he would find his bed ready.

Richelieu gave up the ghost December 4, 1642. The news was immediately carried to the King, who received it with the comment, "A great politician is dead."

In France the feeling of relief was general. No one doubted that the Cardinal's death would change everything. The exiles expected to be recalled; the prisoners expected to be set free; the Opposition looked forward to taking the reins of State, and the great, who in spite of their greatness were probably more or less badly fed, dreamed of an Abbey of Thélème. The mass of Frenchmen loved change for the sake of novelty.

The Parisians had hoped for the spectacle of a fine funeral, and they were not disappointed. Richelieu's body lay in state in its Cardinal's robes, and so many people visited him that the procession consumed one whole day and night passing his bier. The parade lasted nearly a week. The burial took place the thirteenth day of December. It was a public triumph. The funeral car, drawn by six horses, was considered remarkable. But the changes hoped for did not arrive. La Grande Mademoiselle was the first to recognise the fact that Louis XIII. had given the kingdom false hopes. It had been supposed that the Cardinal's demise would give the King power to make the people happy. The Cardinal was dead, and there had been no change. Despite all that Gaston had done, Mademoiselle loved him; she could not separate him from her idea of the glory of her house. She noted in her memoirs the visit made to the Louvre in his behalf:

As soon as I knew that Richelieu was dead I went to the King to beg him to show some kindness to Monsieur. I thought that I had taken a very favourable occasion for moving him to pity, but he refused to do what I asked him, and the next day he went to the palace to register the declaration against Monsieur (as the subject of it is known I need not mention it or explain it here). When he entered Parliament I wished to throw myself at his feet; I wished to beg of him not to go to that extremity against Monsieur; but some one had warned him of my intention and he sent word to me forbidding me to appear. Nothing could make him swerve from his injurious designs.

The 4th December, after Mademoiselle made her unsuccessful visit, Louis XIII. summoned Mazarin to finish the work that Richelieu had begun.

The 5th December Louis sent out a circular letter announcing the death of Richelieu; he cut short the rumours of a political crisis by stating that he was resolved to maintain all the establishments by him decreed in Council with the late Prime Minister, and he further stated that to advance the foreign affairs of France and also to advance the internal interests of the State,—as he had always advanced them,—he should maintain the existent national policy.

The riches amassed by the Cardinal passed into the hands of his heirs, and the King supplemented the legacies by the distribution of a few official appointments. Richelieu was gone from earth, but his spirit still governed France. "All the Cardinal's evils are right here!" cried Mademoiselle; "when he went, they remained."

Montglat said that they "found it difficult to announce the Cardinal's death. No one was willing to take the first step. They spoke in whispers. It was as if they were afraid that his soul would come back to punish them for saying that he could die." It was said that "even the King had so respected the Cardinal when he was alive, that he feared him when he was dead."

Under such conditions it was difficult to make a change of any kind; nevertheless, after weeks had passed—when the King had accustomed himself to independent action—a few changes came about gradually and stealthily, one by one.

The thirteenth day of January, 1643, Monsieur was given permission to call at Saint Germain and pay his respects to the King. The 19th, Bassompierre and two other lords emerged from the Bastille.

In February the Vendômes returned from exile. Old Mme. de Guise also took the road to Paris, and when she arrived her granddaughter, La Grande Mademoiselle, received her with open arms, and gave her a ball and a comedy, and collations composed of confitures, and fruits trimmed with English ribands; and when the ball was over and the guests were departing in the grey fog of early morning, old Madame and young Mademoiselle laid their light heads upon the same pillow and dreamed that Cardinals were always dying and exiles joyfully returning to their own.

As time went on the King's clemency increased and he issued pardons freely. The reason was too plain to every one; the end was at hand. Paris had acquired a taste for her kindly sovereign. Louis knew that he was nearing the tideless sea,—he spoke constantly of his past; he exhibited his skeleton limbs covered with great white scars to his family and his familiar friends; he told the story of his wrongs. He told how he had been brought to the state that he was in by his "executioners of doctors" and by "the tyranny of the Cardinal." He said that the Cardinal had never permitted him to do things as he had wished to do them, and that he had compelled him to do things which had been repugnant to him, so that at last even he "whom Heaven had endowed with all the endurances," had succumbed under the load that had been heaped upon him. His friends listened and were silent.

To the last Louis XIII. was faithful to the sacraments and to France. He performed all his secular duties. When he lay upon his death-bed he summoned his deputies so that they might hear him read the declaration bestowing the title of Regent upon Anne of Austria and delivering the actual power of the Crown into the hands of a prospective Council duly nominated.

Louis XIII. had put his house in order: he had nothing more to do on earth. His sickness was long and tedious, and attended by all that makes death desirable; by cruel pains, by distressful nausea, and by all the torments of a death by inches. The unhappy man was long in dying; now rallying, now sinking, with fluctuations which deranged the intrigues of the Court and agitated Saint Germain.

The King lay in the new château (the one built by his father); nothing remains of it but the "Pavillon Henri IV". Anne of Austria lived with the Court in the old château (the one familiar to all Parisians of the present day).

On "good days" the arrangement afforded the sufferer relative repose; but on "bad days," when he approached a crisis, the etiquette of the Court was torment. The courtiers hurried over to the new château to witness the death-agony. They crowded the sick-room and whispered with the celebrities who travelled daily from Paris to Saint Germain to visit the dying King. In the courtyard of the château the travellers' horses neighed and pawed the ground. Confused sounds and tormenting light entered by the windows; the air of the room was stifling and Louis begged his guests, in the name of mercy, to withdraw from his bed and let him breathe.

The crowds assembled in the courtyard hissed or applauded as the politicians entered or drove away. On the highway before the château the idle people stood waiting to receive the last sigh of the King, to be in at the death, or to make merry at the expense of celebrated men.

While the masters visited the dying King the coachmen, footmen, on-hangers, and other tributaries sat upon the carriage boxes, declared their politics, and issued their manifestos, and their voices rose above the neighing of the horses and ascended to the sick-room. When the tantalising periodically recurrent crises which kept the Court and country on foot were past, the celebrities and men of Parliament, with many of the courtiers, fled to Paris, where they forgot the sights and the sounds of the sick-room in the perfumed air of the Parisian salons.

Mademoiselle wrote of that time: "There never were as many balls as there were that year; and I went to them all."

The final crisis came the thirteenth day of May. Immediately after the King gave up the ghost, the Queen and all the Court retired from the death-chamber and made ready to depart from Saint Germain early in the morning. The moving was like breaking camp. At daybreak long files of baggage wagons laden with furniture and with luggage began to descend the hill of Saint Germain, and soon afterward crowded chariots, drawn by six horses, and groups of cavaliers, joined the lumbering wains. The suppressed droning of many voices accompanied the procession. At eleven o'clock silence fell upon the long, writhing line, and an army corps surrounding the royal mourners passed, escorted by the Marshals of France, dukes and peers, and the gentlemen of the Court,—all mounted.

The last of the battalions filed by the van of the procession, and the chariots and the wains moved on, mingling with the servitors and men of all trades, who in that day followed in the train of all the great.

Saint Germain was vacant. The last errand boy vanished, the murmur of the moving throng died in the distance; the shroud of silence wrapped the new château, and the curtain fell upon the fifth act of the reign of Louis XIII. There remained upon the stage only a corpse, light as a plume, watched by a lieutenant and his guard.

CHAPTER IV

Ormesson and his friends were close observers, who drew conclusions from the general behaviour; they believed that they could read the fate of the country in the faces of the courtiers. France hoped that the Queen would give the nation the change of government which had been vainly looked for when Richelieu died.

Anne of Austria was a determined, self-contained woman, an enigma to the world. No one could read her thoughts, but the courtiers were sure of one thing: she would have no prime minister. She had suffered too deeply from the tyranny of Richelieu. She would keep her hands free! There was enough in that thought to assure to the Queen the sympathy of the people, and to arouse all the ambitious hopes of the nobility.

The Parisian flood met the royal cortège at Nanterre and, turning, accompanied it and hindered its progress. "From Nanterre to the gates of the city the country was full of wains and chariots," wrote Mme. de Motteville, "and nothing was heard but plaudits and benedictions." When the royal mourners surrounded by the multitude entered the Chemin du Roule the first official address was delivered by the Provost of the Merchants. The Regent answered briefly that she should instruct her son "in the benevolence which he ought to show to his subjects."[87] The applause was deafening. The cortège advanced so slowly that it was six o'clock in the evening when Anne of Austria ascended the staircase of the Louvre, saying that she could endure no more, and that she must defer the reception of condolences until the following day.

Saturday, the 16th, was devoted to hearing addresses and to receiving manifestations of reverence. The following Monday the Queen led her son to Parliament, where, contrary to the intention expressed in the last will and testament of Louis XIII., she, Anne of Austria, was declared Regent "with full, entire, and absolute authority."

The evening of that memorable day a radiant throng filled the stifling apartments of the Louvre. The great considered themselves masters of France. Some of the courtiers were gossiping in a corner; all were happy. Suddenly a rumour, first whispered, then spoken aloud, ran through the rooms, Mazarin had been made Chief of Council! The Queen had appointed him immediately after she returned to her palace from Parliament!

The courtiers exchanged significant glances. Some were astounded, others found it difficult to repress their smiles. The great had helped Anne of Austria to seize authority because they had supposed that she would be incapable of using it. Now that it was too late for them to protect themselves she had come forth with the energy and the initiative of a strong woman. In reality, though possessed of reticence, she was a weak woman, acting under a strong influence, but that fact was not evident.

The Queen-mother was forty-one years old. Her hair was beautiful; her eyes were beautiful; she had beautiful hands, a majestic mien, and natural wit. Her education had been as summary as Mademoiselle's; she knew how to read and how to write. She had never opened a book; when she first appeared in Council she was a miracle of ignorance. She had always been conversant with the politics of France because her natural love of intrigue had taught her many things concerning many people. She had learned the lessons of life and the world from the plays presented at the theatre, and from the witty and erudite frequenters of the salons. She was enamoured of intellect, she delighted in eloquence, she was a serious woman and a devoted mother. While Louis XIII. lived she was considered amiable and indulgent to the failings of "low people," because her indifference made her appear complaisant. As soon as she assumed the Regency her manner changed and her real nature came to the surface. She astonished her deputies by the breathless resistance which she opposed to any hint of a suggestion adverse to her mandates. After the royal scream first startled Parliament there was hardly a man of the French State who did not shrink at sight of the Regent's fair flushed face and the determined glitter of her eye. Anne of Austria was acting under guidance; the delicate hand of the woman lay under the firm hand of a master, and her lover's will, not the judgment of the deputies, was her law.

The people had received false impressions of the character of the Queen; some had judged her too favourably (Mme. de Motteville considered her beautiful); others—Retz among them—failed to do her justice.

Anne of Austria was neither a stupid woman nor a great Queen, although she was called both "great" and "foolish." She was born a Spaniard, and in thought and in feeling she was a Spaniard to the end of her life. Like all her race, she was imaginative; she indulged in dreams and erected altars to her ideals. Her life had betrayed her illusions, therefore she longed for vengeance; and as she was romantic, her vengeance took a sentimental form. A study of her nature, as furnished by the histories of her early years, makes her after-life and her administration of the Regency comprehensible. Despite the latitude of her morals she exhibited piety so detailed and so persistent that the Parisians were displeased; one of her friends commented upon it sharply. "She partakes of the communion too often, she reveres the relics of the saints, she is devoted to the Virgin, and she offers the presents and the novenas which the devout consider effectual when they are trying to obtain favours from Heaven." This from a Parisian was critical judgment.

As the Queen was born to rule, she could not comprehend any form of government but absolute monarchy. Her Parliament was shocked when she interrupted its Councils by shrill screams of "Taisez-vous!" But her behaviour was consistent; she believed that she expressed the authority of her son's kingship when she raised her high falsetto and shouted to her deputies to hold their tongues.

The new Minister, Mazarin, was of Sicilian origin, and forty years of age. In Paris, where he had officiated two years (1634-1636), as Papal Nuncio, he was known by his original Italian name, Mazarini. When he was first seen at Court he entered without ceremony and installed himself with the natural ease of an habitué returned after a forced absence. No one knew by what right he made himself at home. Richelieu profited by his versatility and made use of him in various ways. Mazarin was gifted with artistic taste, and he wielded a fluent pen. His appointment as representative of the Holy See had proved his capacity and blameless character. Paris knew that Richelieu had written to him from his death-bed: "I give my book into your hands with the approbation of our good Master, so that you may conduct it to perfection."

Almost immediately after de Richelieu breathed his last the King called Mazarin to the palace, where he remained hard at work as long as the King lived. He had no special duties, but he lived close to the royal invalid, did everything that de Richelieu had done, and made himself in every way indispensable. To the wounds of the tired spirit whose peace the scorching splendour of the great Cardinal had withered the calm presence of the lesser Cardinal was balm. Mazarin employed his leisure as he saw fit; how he employed it the world knew later. He was seldom seen either in the palace or out of it. When Louis XIII. died and the people, little and great, thronged the streets and the highways and flocked to Parliament to witness the establishment of the Regent, Mazarin was not in evidence. When the Provost's address and the other addresses were read, and when the people welcomed their young King, Mazarin was not seen, and as he was not at the funeral of the King, and as no one had heard from him since the King's death, it was believed that he had returned to his own country.