Meanwhile the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, informed of Mazarin's desperate condition, hastens to visit him. She is attended by her gossiping ladies, eager to catch every word, and with nods and winks, and sighs of affected sympathy—to comment on her sorrowful expression.
Her Majesty is pale and sad; tears gather in her eyes as she advances towards the bed on which Mazarin lies, and she asks with a timid yet tender voice after his health. He replies that he is very ill, and repeats to her what Guénaud had told him. If I were to add that he displayed to the Queen and her ladies one of his bare legs, to afford ocular demonstration of his reduced condition, I fear I should be accused of imitating the mauvaise langue of Madame de Noailles. But he really did so, to the great grief of Anne of Austria, and to the utter discomfiture and horror of her less sympathising ladies in waiting, who rapidly retreat into the recesses of the windows, or behind the draperies of the apartment, to escape so unpleasant a spectacle.
"Look!" exclaims Mazarin, thrusting forward his leg—"look, Madame, at the deplorable condition to which I am reduced by my incessant anxiety for the welfare of France! And to leave my pictures too,—my statues. Ah, Madame, it is a bitter trial!"
Soon after this extraordinary interview, and when all the world believed Mazarin to be dead or dying, the cunning Italian, determined once more to dupe the whole Court, and deceitful in his death as he had been in his life, gave orders that his convalescence should be announced. He caused himself to be painted white and red, dressed in his Cardinal's purple robes, and placed in a sedan chair with all the glasses down. Thus he was wheeled along the broad terraces of his garden, taking care to be well observed by the vast crowd collected by the news of his recovery. For a moment he presented the appearance of health and vigour. But the effort he had forced himself to make, in order to enact this ghastly comedy, was too much for his remaining strength. He swooned in his sedan chair, and was brought back and placed on his bed, never to rise again. Thus died as he had lived, Cardinal Mazarin, a dissembler and a hypocrite; but a great minister. Not cruel or bloodthirsty, like Richelieu, though equally unscrupulous, Mazarin gained the end he had in view by patience, cunning, and intrigue. At his death he left France, already exhausted by the wars of the Fronde, completely subdued; and in such a state of abject submission to the throne, as paved the way to the extravagance and oppression of Louis XIV's reign.
CHAPTER XVI.
LOUISE DE LA VALLIÈRE.
THE young King Louis XIV. was active, vigorous, and graceful. He excelled in outward accomplishments, in riding, dancing, and fencing; but intellectually he was both idle and ignorant. His education had been purposely neglected by Cardinal Mazarin; and he was so fully aware of it, that he carefully avoided displaying his ignorance by a too facile or rapid address. Even in youth he was grave and ceremonious; in later years he became pompous and overbearing. On the other hand, the refinement of his mother's nature was reproduced in the son of her love. He was brought up by her side in a circle as elegant and refined as the Hôtel de Rambouillet in its palmiest days. He never forgot the lesson he then learnt, that the outward proprieties of life must be studiously observed, whatever freedoms may be permitted in private. He desired all his life to be considered pious, just, and moral. He failed in each, for his passions were strong and his temper was imperious. The vicissitudes of his early life during the civil wars of the Fronde, when he was often obliged to fly at a moment's notice from place to place, gave him, however, a power of assuming calmness and dignity under all circumstances, which he could never have acquired in less eventful times.
Above all sovereigns Louis understood the art of reigning, of appearing to be a great king when he was really but a shallow, vain, irresolute man, extraordinarily accessible to flattery. Yet that a son of Louis XIII. should say with truth, "L'état c'est moi," and dare to drive out the national Parliament solemnly assembled in the legislative chamber, whip in hand, is one of the most striking anomalies in history.