Mademoiselle de Montpensier interrupted the lady-in-waiting and those who shared her opinion. "I cannot bring myself to establish such a precedent," she said, in her usual haughty tone. "It is I who have to walk first, and I shall only go half-way across the courtyard of the Louvre. It's quite far enough for the Holy Wafer-box; what's the use of walking any further for the Holy Sacrament?"
The princes and princesses were of her way of thinking, and the procession advanced only to the limits aforesaid.
When the time came for taking the Sacred Heart to Val-de-Grace with the funeral procession, Mademoiselle, in a long mourning cloak, said to the Archbishop before everybody, "Pray, monsieur, put the Sacred Heart in the best place, and sit you close beside it. I yield my rank up to you on the present occasion." And, as the prelate protested, she added, "I shall be very willing to ride in front on account of the malady from which she died." And, without altering her resolution, she actually took her seat in front.
CHAPTER VIII.
Cardinal Mazarin.—Regency of Anne of Austria.—Her Perseverance in
Retaining Her Minister.—Mazarin Gives His Nieces in Marriage.—M. de la
Meilleraye.—The Cardinal's Festivities.—Madame de Montespan's Luck at a
Lottery.
Before taking holy orders, Cardinal Mazarin had served as an officer in the Spanish army, where he had even won distinction.
Coming to France in the train of a Roman cardinal, he took service with Richelieu, who, remarking in him all the qualities of a supple, insinuating, artificial nature,—that is to say, the nature of a good politician,—appointed him his private secretary, and entrusted him with all his secrets, as if he had singled him out as his successor.
Upon the death of Richelieu, Mazarin did not scruple to avow that the great Armand's sceptre had been a tyrant's sceptre and of bronze. By such an admission he crept into the good graces of Louis XIII., who, himself almost moribund, had shown how pleased he was to see his chief minister go before him to the grave.
Louis XIII. being dead, his widow, Anne of Austria, in open Parliament cancelled the monarch's testamentary depositions and constituted herself Regent with absolute authority. Mazarin was her Richelieu.
In France, where men affect to be so gallant and so courteous, how is it that when women rule their reign is always stormy and troublous? Anne of Austria—comely, amiable, and gracious as she was—met with the same brutal discourtesy which her sister-in-law, Marie de Medici, had been obliged to bear. But gifted with greater force of intellect than that queen, she never yielded aught of her just rights; and it was her strong will which more than once astounded her enemies and saved the crown for the young King.