168 THE MINISTERS OF LOUIS XIV. Ch. 15 expenses deranged the public finances, and when the foundation was laid of those discontents which ultimately resulted 1661. in the triumph of revolutionary principles. A. D. The first period we have already surveyed; we begin, therefore, with the time when Louis XIV. resolved to be his own prime minister, on the death of Mazarin, in 1661. He was then twenty-three years of age-frank, handsome, imperious, and ambitious. His education had been neglected, but his pride and selfishness had been stimulated. During his minority, he had been straitened for money by the avaricious cardinal —but avaricious for his youthful master, since, at his death, besides his private fortune, which amounted to two hundred Wealth millions of livres, he left fifteen millions of livres, not specified in his will, all which the King seized, and thus became the richest monarch in Europe. of Louis. Dance. He accepted, at first, the ministers, whom the dying cardinal had recommended. The most prominent of these were Le Tellier, De Lionne, and Fouquet. The last, who was intrusted with the public chest, found means to supply the dissipated young monarch with all the money he desired for the indulgence of his expensive tastes and ruinous pleasures. Fouquet made the public accounts as complicated as possible, in order to be retained in power; but Louis soon mastered the secrets of his bureau, turned out the unfaithful servant, and substituted in his place Colbert, unquestionably the ablest Colbert, Minister financial minister which France has ever produced. He was of Fi- both a Protestant and a plebeian; of awkward manners, severe, cold, reserved, but devoted to the interests of his royal master. Sprung from the people, he sought their elevation, so far as he could indirectly promote it, by encouraging the development of the industrial resources of the kingdom. He repaired roads, built bridges, dug canals, and instituted a navy. He recognized the connection between works of industry and the development of genius; and saw the influence of science on the production of riches; of taste on industry; and of the fine arts on manual labor. He instituted the academy of sciences, of inscriptions, PECULIARITIES OF THE REIGN. 169 of belles lettres, of sculpture, and of architecture; founded the Ch. 15 school of law; built the observatory, and gave pensions to A. D. learned men. 1661. the But he was not allowed to follow out his plans as completely as he wished, his chief duty being to provide money for Louis to spend. Moreover, the monarch was eager for undivided Egotsovereignty, and was jealous even of his ministers. He ism of wished to originate everything himself, and looked upon the King. kingdom as a man looks upon his estates,―as a property which he had a right to dispose of as he pleased. When he said, "l'état, c'est moi," he spoke the innermost sentiment of his soul, and revealed the leading principle which characterized his reign. By nature, by education, and by circumstances, he was an egotist, and his vanity, selfishness, and ambition, appeared in all the events of his life. To the developments of this egotism we must direct attention, both in those things which he did to gratify it, and those which he opposed as interfering with it. This vice was the mainspring of his wars, of his courtly extravagance, and of his religious persecutions. As the next chapter will be entirely devoted to the wars in which he engaged, and also those which were carried on against him, in order to preserve the balance of power, we shall consider, in this chapter, simply the domestic history of France during his reign. extra It was the splendor of the court which chiefly arrested the Court eyes of contemporaries. No man ever loved pomp and mag- vanificence more than Louis XIV.; nor could he even forget gance. for a day, that he was 'the One' whom it was the duty of his subjects to bow down before, with every mark of self abnegation and humility. Soon after the death of Mazarin he projected the building of Versailles, on a scale of grandeur then unknown in Europe, where he might surround himself with all that was noble, grand, or intellectual in France, and where he might reign as an Olympian deity, or as a dispenser of universal favors, the 170 MADAME DE MONTESPAN. Ch. 15 object of constant panegyric. In this magnificent abode he devoted his leisure to the most intoxicating pleasures, and to 1670. the most ruinous expenditure. A. D. The goddess of this court was not the Queen of France, Maria Theresa, the discreet and virtuous daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, to whom Louis was married shortly before the death of Mazarin, but a haughty and imperious beauty, who owed her ascendency to her physical charms and her ready wit Ma- the Marchioness de Montespan. She, however, was not the dame de first of those erring women whom the passions of the King had Montes pan. trava gance and pride. elevated, for a time, above the old nobility of the realm. His youthful object of attachment was Mary de Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and she was supplanted by the Duchess de la Vallière, who was incapable of preserving the conquest she had made, and who, disconsolate and repentant, expiated, in the severities of a Carmelite convent, for thirtysix dreary years, the folly of having trusted to the honor of the King, whom she adored. Madame de Montespan was, doubtless, the most brilliant of those women who, for a time, enjoyed ascendency at the court they scandalized and adorned. Her tastes were expenHer ex- sive, and her habits were extravagant and luxurious. On her the Sovereign showered diamonds and rubies. He could refuse her nothing. She received so much from him, that she could afford to endow a convent—the mere building of which cost one million eight hundred thousand livres. Her children were legitimatized, and declared princes of the blood. Through her the royal favors flowed. Ambassadors, ministers, and even prelates, paid their court to her. On her the reproofs of Bossuet fell without effect. Secure in her ascendency over the mind of Louis, she triumphed over his Court, and insulted the nation. But at last he grew weary of her, although she remained at Court eighteen years, and she was dismissed from Versailles on a pension of fifteen millions of livres a year. She lived twenty-two years after her exile from Court, in great splendor, sometimes hoping to regain the ascendency MADAME DE MAINTENON. 171 she had once enjoyed, and at other times enduring those Ch. 15 rigorous penances which her church inflicts as an expiation A. D. for sin. To the last, however, she was haughty and im- 1685. perious, and kept up the vain etiquette of a Court. Her husband, whom she had abandoned, and to whom, after her disgrace, she sought to be reconciled, never would allow her name to be mentioned; and the King, whom for nearly Her twenty years she had enthralled, heard of her death with Death. indifference, as he was starting for a hunting excursion. "Ah, indeed," said Louis XIV., "so the marchioness is dead! I should have thought that she would have lasted longer. Are you ready, M. de la Rochefoucauld? I have no doubt that, after this last shower, the scent will lie well for the dogs. Let us be off at once." dame de As the Marchioness de Montespan lost her power over the royal egotist, Madame de Maintenon gained hers. She was Mathe wife of the poet Scarron, and was first known to the King Mainteas the governess of the children of Montespan. She was, on non. the whole, an estimable and intellectual woman, but artful and ambitious. No person ever had so great an influence over Louis as she; and hers was the ascendency of a strong mind over a weak one. She endeavored to make peace at Court, and to dissuade the King from those vices to which he had so long been addicted. As the King could not live without her, and as she refused to follow the footsteps of her decessors, in the year 1685 he made her his wife. was worthy of his choice; the severest scrutiny of foes has ter. never been able to detect in her life a single act inconsistent with virtue and honor. Her greatest defect was the narrowness of her religious prejudices, under the influence of which she befriended the Jesuits and incited the King to religious persecutions. pre- Her She charac But Louis XIV. was far from needing any incentive to repress the spirit of intellectual independence. He could not bear any dissent from opinions which he either advanced or endorsed. He disliked the Jansenists as cordially as he did 172 JEALOUSY OF GREAT MEN. Ch. 15 the Huguenots. He honored those only who perpetually bowed before him. A. D. 1685 Hence, the really great men who surrounded him did to but little, in spite of their genius, for the elevation of the 1715. French mind. They were illustrious for the light they shed around the throne, rather than for the impulse they gave to civilization. Turenne and Condé, who commanded his armies; around Colbert and Louvois, who directed his councils; Bossuet and throne. Fléchier, who taught his children; Bourdaloue and Massillon, Great men the Their repress who reminded him of his duties; La Chaise and Le Tellier, who controlled his conscience; Racine, Molière, Corneille, and Boileau, who enlightened his mind; Molé and D'Auguessau, who presided in his courts; Vauban, who fortified his citadels; Riquet, who dug his canals; Mansard, who constructed his palaces; Poussin, who decorated his chambers; and Le Notre, who laid out his gardens, lived but to emblazon his fame and centralize his power. All who thought of elevating France, rather than its monarch, were banished from the realm. The devout Jansenists, whose ranks Pascal, Le Martin, and De Lacy, had adorned, in the Vale of Port Royal; the long suffering Huguenots, who claimed, in more obscure retreats, the liberty of worshipping God according to their consciences; and even the Quietists, whom Fenélon had patronised, were alike doomed to persecution. Nor was there ever a period since the Reformation when genius the writings of great men in France were so little marked by ed. independence of character. Neither Pascal, with his intense hostility to spiritual despotism; nor Racine, with his appreciation of the free spirit of ancient Greece; nor Fenélon, with his patriotic enthusiasm and clear perception of the moral strength of empires, ventured to give full scope to their sentiments, or produced, in a political point of view, anything worthy of their genius. The remorseless egotism of Louis XIV. was fatal to all men who were not ready to be either martyrs or slaves. He sought to concentrate around his throne all the |