_Paris under Richelieu and Mazarin_
Before Coryat left Paris he rode a sorry jade to Fontainebleau which,
"though I did excarnificate his sides," would not stir until a
gentleman of the court drew his rapier and ran him to the "buttock."
At the palace he saw the "Dolphin whose face was full and fat-cheeked,
his hair black, his look vigorous and courageous." The Dolphin that
Coryat saw came to the throne, at nine years of age, in 1610, as Louis
XIII. For a time the regent, Marie de' Medici, was content to suffer
the great Sully to hold office, but soon favouritism and the greed of
princes, to the ill-hap of France, drove him in the prime of life from
Paris into the retirement of his chateau of Villebon, and a feeble and
venal Florentine, Concini, who came to Paris in the time of Marie,
took his place. The Prince of Conde, now a Catholic, the Duke of
Mayenne, and a pack of nobles fell upon the royal treasury like hounds
on their quarry. In 1614, so critical was the financial situation,
that the States-General were called to meet in the Salle Bourbon,[132]
but to little purpose. Recriminations were bandied between the
noblesse and the Tiers Etat. The insolence of the former was
intolerable. One member of the Tiers was thrashed by a noble and could
obtain no redress. The clergy refused to bear any of the public
burdens. The orator of the Tiers, speaking on his knees according to
usage, warned the court that despair might make the people conscious
that a soldier was none other than a peasant bearing arms, and that
when the vine-dresser took up the arquebus he might one day cease to
be the anvil and become the hammer. But there was no thought for the
common weal; each order wrangled for its own privileges, and their
meeting-place was closed on the pretext that the hall was wanted for a
royal ballet. No protest was raised, and the States-General never met
again until the fateful meeting at Versailles, in 1789, when a similar
pretext was tried, with very different consequences. Among the clergy,
however, sat a young priest of twenty-nine years of age, chosen for
their orator, Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, who made rapid strides to
fame.
[Footnote 132: In the Hotel de Bourbon, east of the old Louvre,
sometimes known as the Petit Bourbon. It was demolished to give place
to the new east facade of the Louvre.]
In 1616 the nobles were once more in arms, and Conde was again bought
off. The helpless court was in pitiful straits and the country
drifting to civil war, when Richelieu, who, meanwhile, had been made a
royal councillor and minister for foreign affairs, took the Conde
business in hand. He had the prince arrested in the Louvre itself and
flung into the Bastille; the noble blackmailers were declared guilty
of treason, and three armies marched against them. The triumph of the
court seemed assured, when Louis XIII., now sixteen years of age,
suddenly freed himself from tutelage, and with the help of the
favourite companion of his pastimes, Albert de Luynes, son of a
soldier of fortune, determined to rid himself of Concini. The
all-powerful Florentine, on 24th April 1617, was crossing the bridge
that spanned the eastern fosse of the Louvre, when the captain of the
royal Guards, who was accompanied by a score of gentlemen, touched him
on the shoulder and told him he was the king's prisoner. "I, a
prisoner!" exclaimed Concini, moving his hand towards his sword.
Before he could utter another word he fell dead, riddled with pistol
shots; Louis appeared at a window, and all the Louvre resounded with
cries of "_Vive le roi!_" Concini's wife, to whom he owed his
ascendency over the queen-mother, was accused of sorcery, beheaded and
burnt on the Place de Greve; Marie was packed off to Blois and
Richelieu exiled to his bishopric of Lucon. De Luynes, enriched by the
confiscated wealth of the Concini, now became supreme at Paris only to
demonstrate a pitiful incapacity. The nobles had risen and were
rallying round Marie; the Protestants were defying the state; but
Luynes was impotent, and soon went to a dishonoured grave, leaving
chaos behind him.
Richelieu's star was now in the ascendant. The king drew near to his
mother, and both turned to the one man who seemed able to knit
together the distracted state. A cardinal's hat was obtained for him
from Rome, and the illustrious churchman ruled in Paris for eighteen
years. Everything went down before his commanding genius, his iron
will and his indefatigable industry. "I reflect long," said he,
"before making a decision, but once my mind is made up, I go straight
to the goal. I mow down all before me, and cover all with my scarlet
robe." The Huguenots, backed by the English, aimed at founding an
independent republic: Richelieu captured La Rochelle[133] and wiped
them out as a political party. The great nobles sought to divide power
with the crown: he demolished their fortresses, made them bow their
necks to the royal yoke or chopped off their heads. They defied the
king's edict against duelling: the Count of Bouteville, the most
notorious duellist of his time, and the Count of Les Chapelles were
sent to the scaffold for having defiantly fought duels in the Place
Royale in open noonday, at which the Marquis of Buffy was killed. The
execution made a profound impression, for the Count was a Montmorency,
and the Condes, the Orleans, the Montmorencys and all the most
powerful nobles brought pressure to bear on the king and swore that
the sentence should never be carried out. But Richelieu was firm as a
tower. "It is an infamous thing," he told Louis, "to punish the weak
alone; they cast no baleful shade: we must keep discipline by striking
down the mighty." Richelieu crushed the Parlement and revolutionised
the provincial administrations. He maintained seven armies in the
field, and two navies on the seas at one and the same time. He added
four provinces to France--Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Rousillon,
humiliated Austria and exalted his country to the proud position of
dominant factor in European politics. He foiled plot after plot and
crushed rebellion. The queen-mother, Gaston Duke of Orleans her second
son and heir to the throne, the Marquis of Cinq-Mars the king's own
favourite--each tried a fall with the great minister, but was thrown
and punished with pitiless severity. Marie herself was driven to
exile--almost poverty--at Brussels, and died a miserable death at
Cologne. The despicable Gaston, who twice betrayed his friends to save
his own skin, was watched, and when the queen, Anne of Austria, gave
birth to a son after twenty years of marriage, he was deprived of his
dignities and possessions and interned at Blois. The Marquis of
Cinq-Mars, and the last Duke of Montmorency, son and grandson of two
High Constables of France, felt the stroke of the headsman's axe.
[Footnote 133: The Church of Notre Dame des Victoires commemorates the
victory.]
In 1642, when the mighty cardinal had attained the highest pinnacle
of success and fame, a mortal disease declared itself. His physicians
talked the usual platitudes of hope, but he would have none of them,
and sent for the _cure_ of St. Eustache. "Do you pardon your enemies?"
the priest asked. "I have none, save those of the state," replied the
dying cardinal, and, pointing to the Host, exclaimed, "There is my
judge." Louis heard of his death without emotion, and simply
remarked--"Well, a great politician has gone." In six months his royal
master was gone too.
Paris, under Marie de' Medici and Richelieu, saw many and important
changes. In 1612 a new Jacobin monastery was founded in the Rue St.
Honore for the reformed Dominicans, destined later to be the theatre
of Robespierre's triumphs and to house the great Jacobin revolutionary
club.[134] In the same year the queen-regent bought a chateau and
garden from the Duke of Piney-Luxembourg, and commissioned her
architect, Solomon Debrosse, to build a new palace in the style of the
Pitti at Florence. The work was begun in 1615, and resulted in the
picturesque but somewhat Gallicised Italian palace which, after
descending to Gaston of Orleans and his daughter the Grande
Mademoiselle, ends a chequered career as palace, revolutionary prison,
house of peers, and socialist meeting-place by becoming the
respectable and dull Senate-house of the third Republic. The beautiful
Renaissance gardens have suffered but few changes; adorned with
Debrosse's picturesque fountain, they form one of the most charming
parks in Paris. The same architect was employed to restore the old
Roman aqueduct of Arcueil and finished his work in 1624. In 1614 the
equestrian statue in bronze of Henry IV., designed by Giovanni da
Bologna, and presented to Marie by Cosimo II. of Tuscany, reached
Paris after many vicissitudes and was set up on the Pont Neuf by
Pierre de Fouqueville, who carved for it a beautiful pedestal of
marble, whereon were inscribed the most signal events and victories of
Henry's reign. This priceless statue was melted down for cannon during
the Revolution, and for years its site was occupied by a _cafe_. In
1818, during the Restoration, another statue of Henry IV., by Lemot,
cast from the melted figure of Napoleon I. on the top of the Vendome
column, was erected where it now stands. The founder, who was an
imperialist, is said to have avenged the emperor by placing pamphlets
attacking the Restoration in the horse's belly.
[Footnote 134: The Marche St. Honore now occupies its site.]
[Illustration: THE MEDICI FOUNTAIN, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.]
In the seventeenth century the Pont Neuf was one of the busiest
centres of Parisian life. Streams of coaches and multitudes of
foot-passengers passed by. Booths of all kinds displayed their wares;
quacks, mountebanks, ballad-singers and puppet-shows, drew crowds of
listeners. Evelyn describes the footway as being three to four feet
higher than the road; and at the foot of the bridge, says the
traveller, is a water-house, "whereon, at a great height is the story
of our Saviour and the Woman of Samaria pouring water out of a bucket.
Above is a very rare dyall of several motions with a chime. The water
is conveyed by huge wheels, pumps and other engines, from the river
beneath." This was the famous Chateau d'Eau, or La Samaritaine,
erected in 1608 and rebuilt in 1712 to pump water from the Seine and
distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece
was an _industrieuse horloge_, which told the hours, days, and months.
The present baths of La Samaritaine mark its site and retain its name.
[Illustration: PONT NEUF.]
In 1624, Henry the Fourth's great scheme for enlarging and completing
the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques
Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l'Horloge was laid
on 28th June by Louis. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to
adopt his predecessor's design and having erected the pavilion,
continued Lescot's west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle
and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent.
The Pavilion de l'Horloge thus became the central feature of the west
wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and
north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre,
however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre's drawing
shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only
partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the
cardinal, north of the Rue St. Honore, including in the plans two
theatres: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a
larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious
enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by
Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events
in the cardinal's reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great
men of France, each with a Latin distich in letters of gold. The
courts were adorned with carvings of ships' prows and anchors,
symbolising the cardinal's function as Grand Master of Navigation;
spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000
francs to train, added to its splendours.
In this palace the great minister, busy with a yet vaster scheme for
building an immense Place Ducale to the north, passed away leaving its
stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria,
inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip,
Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous
architect, Francois Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais
Royal as it was then called, which in 1652 was occupied by Henrietta
Maria, Charles I.'s widow, whose court ill repaid the hospitality of
France by acts of Vandalism. In 1661, on the marriage of Henrietta
Anne, her daughter, to the Duke of Orleans it was assigned to the
Orleans princes, a portion being reserved for Louis XIV. where he
lodged his mistress Mme. de la Valliere. The palace subsequently
became infamous as the scene of almost incredible orgies during the
regency. In 1730 Philip II.'s austere and pious son, Prince Louis,
after having made an _auto-da-fe_ of forty pictures of the nude from
the Orleans collection, permitted the destruction of Richelieu's
superb avenue of trees. The buildings were further extended by Philip
Egalite, who erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as
_cafes_ and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and
dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal
palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices
forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under
pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. Egalite,
however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction,
and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here
Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris
to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred,
survived the Revolution, and Bluecher and many an officer of the allied
armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently
the residence of Louis Philippe, and now serves as the meeting-place
of the Conseil d'Etat.
In the early seventeenth century nine lovers of literature associated
themselves for the purpose of holding a friendly symposium, where they
discoursed of books, and read and criticised each other's
compositions; the meetings were followed by a modest repast and a
peripatetic discussion. The masterful cardinal, who would rule the
French language as well as the state, called the nine together, and in
1635 organised them into an Academie Francaise, whose function should
be to perfect and watch over the purity of the French tongue. The
Parlement granted letters-patent, limited the number of academicians
to forty, and required them to take cognisance of French authors and
the French language alone. The original nine, however, were far from
gratified, and always regretted the "golden age" of early days.
Richelieu established the Jardin des Plantes for the use of medical
students, where demonstrations in botany were given; he rebuilt the
college and church of the Sorbonne where his monument,[135] by
Girardon from Lebrun's designs, may still be seen. He cheapened the
postal service,[136] established the Royal Press at the Louvre which
in twenty years published seventy Greek, Latin, Italian and French
classics. He issued the first political weekly gazette in France, was
a liberal patron of men of letters and of artists, and saw the birth
and fostered the growth of the great period of French literary and
artistic supremacy.
[Footnote 135: In 1793 the tomb was desecrated, and the head removed
from the body, but in 1863, as an inscription tells, the head was
recovered by the historian Duruy, and after seventy years reunited to
the trunk.]
[Footnote 136: A letter from Paris to Lyons was taxed at two sous.]
Another of Henry the Fourth's plans for the aggrandisement of Paris
was carried out by the indefatigable minister. As early as 867 the
bishops of Paris had been confirmed by royal charter, in their
possession of the two islands east of the Cite, the Isle Notre Dame
and Isle aux Vaches. From time immemorial these had been used as
timber-yards, and in 1616 the chapter of the cathedral was induced to
treat with Christophe Marie, contractor for the bridges of France, and
others, who agreed to fill in the channel[137] which separated the
islands; to cover them with broad streets of houses and quays, and to
build certain bridges; but expressly contracted never to fill up the
arm of the Seine between the Isle Notre Dame, and the Cite. The first
stone of the new bridge which was to connect the islands with the
north bank was laid by Louis XIII. in 1614 and named Pont Marie, after
the contractor. In 1664 a church, dedicated to St. Louis, was begun
on the site of an earlier chapel by Levau, but not completed until
1726 by Donat.
[Footnote 137: The Rue Poulletier marks the line of the old channel
between the islands.]
The new quarter soon attracted the attention of rich financiers, civic
officers, merchants and lawyers, some of whose hotels were designed by
Levau, and decorated by Lebrun and Lesueur. Madame Pompadour's brother
lived there; the Duke of Lauzan, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle,
lived in his hotel on the Quai d'Anjou (No. 17); Voltaire lived with
Madame du Chatelet in the Hotel Lambert (No. 1 Quai d'Anjou). To the
_precieuses_ of Moliere's time the Isle St. Louis (for so it was
called) became the Isle de Delos, around whose quays the gallants and
ladies of the period were wont to promenade at nightfall. _The Isle_,
as it is now familiarly known, is one of the most peaceful quarters of
Paris, and has a strangely provincial aspect to the traveller who
paces its quiet streets.
In 1622 Paris was raised from its subjection to the Metropolitan of
Sens, and became for the first time the seat of an archbishopric; the
diocese was made to correspond to the old territories of the Parisii.
Among the many evils attendant on a monarchy, which Samuel recited to
the children of Israel, that of the possibility of a regency might
well have found place. Louis XIV. was less than five years of age when
his father died, and once again the great nobles turned the
difficulties of the situation to their own profit. By a curious
anomaly, while women were excluded from succession to the throne of
France, the queen-mother was invariably preferred to all other
claimants for the Regency, and Anne of Austria became regent in
accordance with old custom. She retained in office Cardinal Mazarin,
Richelieu's faithful disciple, chosen by him to continue the
traditions of his policy. The new cardinal-minister, scion of an old
Sicilian family, was a typical Italian; he had none of his
predecessor's virile energy and directness of purpose, but ruled by
his subtle wit and cool, calculating patience. "Time and I," was his
device. He was an excellent judge of men, and profoundly distrusted
"the unlucky," always satisfying himself that a man was "lucky,"
before he employed him. Conscious of his foreign origin, Mazarin
hesitated to take strong measures, and advised a policy of
conciliation with the disaffected nobles. Anne filled their pockets,
and for a time the whole language of the court is said to have
consisted of the five little words "_La reine est si bonne_." But the
ambitious courtiers soon aimed at higher game, and a plot was
discovered to assassinate the foreign cardinal; the Duke of Beaufort,
chief conspirator, a son of the Duke of Vendome, and grandson of Henry
IV., by Gabrielle d'Estrees, was imprisoned in the keep at Vincennes,
and his associates interned at their chateaux.
The finances which Richelieu had left in so flourishing a condition
were soon exhausted by the lavish benevolence of the court, and were
unhappily in the hands of Emery (a clever but cynical official, who
had formerly been a fraudulent bankrupt), whose rigorous exactions and
indifference to public feeling aroused the indignation of the whole
nation. In 1646, 23,800 defaulters lay rotting in the jails, and an
attempt to enforce an odious tax on all merchandise entering Paris led
to an explosion of popular wrath. The Parlement, by the re-assertion
of its claims to refuse the registration of an obnoxious decree of the
crown, made itself the champion of public justice; the four sovereign
courts met in the hall of St. Louis, and refused to register the tax.
Anne was furious and made the boy-king hold a "bed[138] of justice"
to enforce the registration of the decree. But the Parlement stood
firm, declared itself the guardian of the public and private weal,
claiming even to reform abuses and to discuss and vote on schemes of
taxation. So critical was the situation that the court was forced to
bend, and to postpone the humiliation of the Parlement to a more
convenient season. The glorious issue of the campaigns of Conde
against the Houses of Spain and Austria seemed to offer the desired
opportunity. On 26th August 1648, while a Te Deum was being sung at
Notre Dame for the victory of Lens, and a grand trophy of
seventy-three captured flags was displayed to the people, three of the
most stubborn members of the Parlement were arrested. One escaped, but
while the venerable Councillor Broussel was being hustled into a
carriage, a cry was raised, which stirred the whole of Paris to
insurrection. In the excitement a street porter was shot by a captain
of the Guards, the Marquis of Meilleraye, and the next morning the
court, aroused by cries of "Liberty and Broussel," found the streets
of Paris barricaded and the citizens in arms. De Retz, the suffragan
archbishop of Paris, came in his robes to entreat Anne to appease the
people, but was snubbed for his pains. "It is a revolt," she cried,
"to imagine a revolt possible; these are silly tales of those who
desire it: the king will enforce order." De Retz, angry and insulted,
left to join the insurrection and to become its leader. The venerable
president of the Parlement, Mole, and the whole body of members next
repaired to the Palais Royal with no better success: Anne's only
answer was a gibe. As they returned crestfallen from the Palais Royal
they were driven back by the infuriated people, who threatened them
with death, and clamoured for Broussel's release or Mazarin as a
hostage. Nearly all the councillors fled, but the president, with
exalted courage, faced them and, answering gravely, as if in his
judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of
earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of
missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's
triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal,
and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of
the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of
tumultuous joy.
[Footnote 138: So named from the wooden seat, or _couche de bois_,
covered with rich stuff embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_, on which the
king sat when he attended a meeting of the Parlement.]
In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert
its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the
palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Conde: the Parlement
taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen
militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now
at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles.
The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university
promised its support and a subsidy. Thus arose the civil war of the
Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history, whose name
is derived from the puerile street fights with slings, of the
printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war
read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens
were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque
form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cocheres_, formed by
a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate,
became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and
beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the
people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the
Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and
mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen
at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard
sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book,"
said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement
soon, however, tired of the folly; Mazarin won over De Retz by the
offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the
court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The People were still
bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding
the cardinal's signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the
common hangman.
Successful generals are bad masters, and the jackboot was now supreme
at court. Soon Conde's insolent bearing and the vanity of his
_entourage_ of young nobles, dubbed _petits maitres_, became
intolerable: he was arrested at the Louvre, and sent to the keep at
Vincennes. But Mazarin, thinking himself secure, delayed the promised
reward to De Retz, who joined the disaffected friends of Conde: the
court, again foiled, was forced to release Conde, surrender the two
princes, and exile the hated Mazarin, who, none the less, ruled the
storm by his subtle policy from Cologne. Conde, disgusted alike with
queen and Parlement, now fled to the south, and raised the standard of
rebellion.
The second phase of the wars of the Fronde became a more serious
matter. Turenne, won over by the court, was given command of the royal
forces, and moved against Conde. The two armies, after indecisive
battles, raced to Paris and fought for its possession outside the
Porte St. Antoine. The Frondeurs occupied what is now the Faubourg St.
Antoine: the royalists the heights of Charonne. It was a stubborn and
bloody contest. The armies were led by the two greatest captains of
the age, and fought under the eyes of their king, who with the
queen-mother watched the struggle from the eminence now crowned by
the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. "I have seen not one Conde to-day, but
a dozen," cried Turenne, as victory inclined to the Royalists. The
last word was, however, with the Duke of Orleans: while he sat
hesitating in the Luxembourg, the Grande Mademoiselle ordered the guns
of the Bastille to be turned against Turenne, and the citizens opened
the gates to Conde. Again his incorrigible insolence and brutality
made Paris too hot for him, and with the disaffected princes he
returned to Flanders to seek help from his country's enemies--a fatal
mistake, which Mazarin was not slow to turn to advantage. He prudently
retired while public feeling was won over to the young king, who was
soon entreated by the Parlement and citizens to return to Paris. When
the time was ripe, Mazarin had the Duke of Orleans interned at Blois,
Conde was condemned to death _in contumacio_: De Retz was sent to
Vincennes. Ten councillors of the Parlement were imprisoned or
degraded, and in three months Mazarin returned to Paris with the pomp
and equipage of a sovereign. It was the end of the Fronde, and of the
attempt of the Parlement of Paris, a venal body[139] devoid of
representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of
Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before,
and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his
mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St.
Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances
against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at
Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[140] and
spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting.
[Footnote 139: One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had
been to offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of
1604 the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment
to the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was
but a local body, one among several others in the provinces.]
[Footnote 140: The added indignity of the whip is an invention of
Voltaire.]
The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant
foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying
the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed
Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph
over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after a
pathetic scene in his sumptuous palace, where the stricken old
cardinal dragged his tottering steps along its vast galleries, casting
a despairing look on the marvellous treasures of art he had collected
and sorrowing like a child at the idea of separating from them for
ever, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were
not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin
was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to
satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish
dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now
the Bibliotheque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes,
freely open to scholars, was furnished with princely splendour. He
left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education
of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces--Spanish, Italian,
German and Flemish--recently added to the crown, in order that French
culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught
the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christian piety, and
_belles-lettres_. A vast domed edifice was raised on the site of the
Tour de Nesle, and became famous as the College of the Four Nations.
It was subsequently expropriated and given by the Convention to the
five learned academies of France, and is now known as the Institut de
France.
[Illustration: THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.]