第12章 CHAPTER VIII.(1)

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.

They lampooned her, hissed her, and burlesqued her publicly at the theatres, cruelly defaming her intentions and her private life. Strong in the knowledge of her own rectitude, she faced the tempest without flinching; yet inwardly her soul was torn to pieces. The barricading of Paris, the insolence of M. le Prince, the bravado and treachery of Cardinal de Retz, burnt up the very blood in her veins, and brought on her fatal malady, which took the form of a hideous cancer.

Our nobility (who are only too glad to go and reign in Naples, Portugal, or Poland) openly declared that no foreigner ought to hold the post of minister in Paris. Despite his Roman purple, Mazarin was condemned to be hanged.

The motive for this was some trifling tax which he had ordered to be collected before this had been ratified by the magistrates and registered in the usual way.

But the Queen knew how to win over the nobles. Her cardinal was recalled, and the apathy of the Parisians put an end to these dissensions, from which, one must admit, the people and the bourgeoisie got all the ills and the nobility all the profits.

As comptroller of the list of benefices, M. le Cardinal allotted the wealthiest abbeys of the realm to himself.

Having made himself an absolute master of finance, like M. Fouquet, he amassed great wealth. He built a magnificent palace in Rome, and an equally brilliant one in Paris, conferring upon himself the wealthy governorships of various towns or provinces. He had a guard of honour attached to his person, and a captain of the guard in attendance, just as Richelieu had.