Orders. In that day it was not considered necessary to take orders
before entering the Episcopate. "They taxed revenues, they delegated
vicars-general for judicial action, and when the power of the Church
was needed they delegated bishops. There were many prelates who were
not priests." Henri de Lorraine II., Duc de Guise (born in 1614), was
only fifteen years old when he received the Archbishopric of Rheims; he
never received Holy Orders. In priestly vestments he presented every
appearance of the most pronounced type of the ecclesiastical hybrid; he
was an excellent Catholic, and a gallant and dashing pontiff-cavalier.
His life as layman was far from religious. When he was twenty-seven
years old he met a handsome widow, Mme. de Bossut. He married her on
the spot without drum or cannon; and then, because some formality
had been omitted, the marriage was confirmed by the Archbishop of
Malines. The Church saw no obstacle to the marriage. Nicolas-François
de Lorraine, Bishop of Toul, and Cardinal, was another example;
"without being engaged in orders" he became "Duc de Lorraine" (1634)
by the abdication of his brother Charles. He had political reasons for
marrying his cousin "Claude" without delay, but he was stopped by an
obstacle which did not emanate from his bishopric. Claude was his own
cousin, and the prohibitions of the Church made it necessary for him to
get a dispensation from Rome.
François visited his cousin and made his proposals. As a layman he
needed a publication of his bans, and as a Catholic, in order to
marry his cousin, he needed a dispensation from the Pope. Therefore
he re-assumed the character of Bishop and issued a dispensation
eliminating his bans, then, in the name of the Pope, he issued a
dispensation making it spiritually lawful for him to marry his cousin
to himself; that accomplished, he cast off the character of Bishop
and was married by a regularly ordained priest like an ordinary
mortal. In those days there was no abyss between the Church and the
world. At most there was only a narrow ditch which the great lords
crossed and recrossed at will, as caprice or interest moved them. In
their portraits this species of oscillation, which was one of their
distinguishing movements, is distinctly recorded and made evident even
to the people of this century.
In the gallery of the Louvre we see a picture due to the brush of the
Le Nain brothers, entitled, _Procession in a Church_. That part of the
procession which is directly in front of the spectator is composed
of members of the clergy, vested with all their churchly ornaments.
The superb costumes are superbly worn by men of proud and knightly
bearing. The portraits betray the true characters of their originals.
These men are courtiers, utterly devoid of the collected and meditative
tranquillity found in the legions of the Church. In the Le Nain
brothers' picture the most notable figures are two warlike priests, who
stand, like Norse kings, at the head of the procession, transfixing
us with their look of bold assurance. No priests in ordinary, these,
but natural soldiers, ready to die for a word or an idea! Their curled
moustachios are light as foam; their beards are trimmed to a point,
and under the embroidered dalmatica the gallant mien of the worldling
frets as visibly as a lion in its cage. It is impossible to doubt it:
these are soldiers; cavaliers who have but assumed the habit; who will
take back the doublet and the sword, and with them the customs and the
thoughts of men of war. Whatever their rank in the Church, hazard and
birth alone have placed them there; and thus are they working out the
sentence imposed by the ambition of their families; giving the lie to a
calling for which they have neither taste nor capacity. The will of a
strong man can defeat even pre-natal influences, and, knowing it, they
make no hypocritical attempt to hide their character. They were not
meant for priests, and every look and every action shows it.
The Cardinal-Infant, Archbishop of Toledo, was only a deacon, so there
was nothing extraordinary in the thought that he might marry. I cannot
say that he ever thought of marrying Mademoiselle; I have never found
any proof that he entertained such a thought; the only thing absolutely
certain in the whole affair is that Mademoiselle never doubted that he
intended, or had intended, to marry her. Here is her own account of it,
somewhat abridged and notably incoherent:
The Cardinal-Infant died of a tertian fever (9th November 1641),
which had not hindered his remaining in the army all through
the campaign.... His malady had not appeared very dangerous;
nevertheless he died a few days after he came back from Brussels;
which made them say that the Spaniards had poisoned him because
they were afraid that by forming an alliance with France he would
render himself master of Flanders,[78] and, in fact, that was his
design. The Queen told me that after the King died she found in his
strong-box memoranda showing that my marriage with that Prince had
been decided upon. She told me nothing but that ... when this loss
came upon them the King said to the Queen ... and he said it very
rudely--"Your brother is dead." That news, so coarsely announced,
added to her grief ... and for my own part, when I reflected
upon my interests I was very deeply grieved; because that would
have been the most agreeable establishment in the world for me,
because of the beauty of the country, lying as it does so near this
country, and because of the way in which they live there. As for
the qualities of his person, though I esteemed him much, that was
the least that I thought of.
The disappearance of the Cardinal-Infant was followed by events so
tragic and so closely connected with Mademoiselle's life that her mind
was distracted from her hunt for a husband. Despite her extreme youth,
the affair Cinq-Mars constrained her to judge her father, and to the
child to whom nothing was as dear as honour the revelation of his
treachery was crushing.
IV
The death of Cinq-Mars was the dénouement of a great and tragic
passion. Henry d'Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was described as a
handsome youth with soft, caressing eyes, marvellously graceful in all
his movements.[79]
His mother was ambitious; she knew that men had risen to power by
the friendship of kings. Richelieu's schemes required a thousand
complicated accessories. So it was decided by the Cardinal and by
Cinq-Mars's mother to present the child to the King and to place him in
the royal presence to minister to the King's pleasure for an hour, as a
beautiful flower is given to be cherished for a time, then cast away.
The King was capricious and childish and, as Richelieu said, "he must
always have his toy"; but elderly children, like very young children,
soon tire of their toys and when they tire of them they destroy them;
Louis XIII. had broken everything that he had played with, and his
admiration inspired terror. Cinq-Mars was determined that he would not
be a victim. Though very young, he knew the ways of the world and he
had formed plans for his future. He was fond of the world and fond of
pleasure. He was a natural lover, always sighing at the feet of women.
He was brave and he had counted upon a military career. The thought of
imprisonment in the Château of Saint Germain with a grumbling invalid
whose ennui no one could vanquish was appalling; but after two years
of resistance he yielded and entered the royal apartment as officer
nearest to the King. It has been said that he lacked energy, but as he
resisted two whole years before he gave up the struggle, and as the
will which he opposed was the will of Richelieu, it is difficult to
believe that he was not energetic.
History tells us that he was very nervous and that, although his will
was feeble, he was subject to fits of anger. In 1638 he was in the
King's household as Master of the Robes. He was eighteen years old.
It was his business to select and order the King's garments, and the
King was wont to reject whatever the boy selected because it was
"too elegant." When Cinq-Mars was first seen in the King's apartment
he was silent and very sad; the King's displeasure cowed him; the
beautiful and gentle face and the appealing glance of the soft eyes
irritated the sickly fancies of the monarch and he never noticed or
addressed Cinq-Mars when he could avoid it. Cinq-Mars hated Saint
Germain, and, truth to tell, even to an older and graver person, the
lugubrious château would have seemed a prison. Sick at heart, weak
in mind, tortured by fleshly ills, Louis XIII., sinking deeper into
insignificance as the resplendent star of his Prime Minister rose, was
but sorry company for any one.
Richelieu was the real ruler of France. Ranke, who used his relations
with ambassadors as a means for increasing his store of personal and
political data, said:
Dating our observations from the year 1629, we see a crowd of
soldiers and other attentive people thronging Richelieu's house and
even standing in the doors of his apartments. When he passes in his
litter he is saluted respectfully; one kneels, another presents
a petition, a third tries to kiss his vestments; all are happy
who succeed in obtaining a glance from him. It is as if all the
business of the country were already in his hands; he has assumed
the highest responsibilities ever borne by a subject....
As time went on his success augmented his power. He lived in absolute
seclusion at Rueil. He was difficult of approach, and if an ambassador
succeeded in gaining admission to his presence it was because he had
been able to prove that he had something to communicate to Richelieu
which it was of essential interest to the State, or to the Cardinal
personally, to know. All the national business was in his hands. He was
the centre of all State interests, the King frequently attended his
councils. If Richelieu visited the King he was surrounded by a guard;
he hired his guard himself, selecting his men with great care and
paying them out of his own pocket, so that he might feel that he was
safe from his enemies even in the King's presence.
The officers of his personal service were numerous, young and very
exalted nobles. His stables were in keeping with his importance; and
his house was more magnificent and his table better served than the
King's. When in Paris he lived in the Palais Cardinal (now the Palais
Royal) surrounded by princely objects, all treasures in themselves; his
train was the train of an emperor. The Louvre, the King's residence,
was a simple palace, but the Cardinal's palace, called in Court
language the "Hôtel de Richelieu," was the symbol of the luxury and
the art of France, toward which the eyes of the people of France and
of all other lands were turned. In the Hôtel de Richelieu there were
cabinets where the high officials sat in secret discussion, boudoirs
for the fair ladies, ball-rooms, treasure galleries where works of
art were lavishly displayed, a chapel, and two theatres. The basis of
the Cardinal's library was the public library of Rochelle, which had
been seized after the siege. The chapel was one of the chief sights of
Paris. Everything used in the ceremonial of worship was of solid gold,
ornamented with great diamonds. Among the precious objects in use were
two church chandeliers,[80] all of massive gold, enamelled and enriched
with two thousand five hundred and sixteen diamonds. The vases used in
the service of the Mass were of fine, richly enamelled gold, and in
them were set two hundred and sixty-two diamonds. The cross, which was
between twenty and twenty-one inches high, bore a figure of Christ of
massive gold and the crown of thorns and the loin-cloth were studded
with diamonds.
[Illustration: THE HOTEL DE RICHELIEU IN THE 17TH CENTURY
FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT]
The Book of Prayer used by the Cardinal was bound in fine morocco
leather; each side of the cover was enwreathed with sprigs of gold. On
one side of the cover was a golden medallion, on which the Cardinal was
depicted, like an emperor, holding the globe of the world in his hand;
from the four corners of the cover angels were descending to crown
his head with flowers. Beneath the device ran the Latin inscription,
"_Cadat_." The ceiling of the grand gallery of the palace (destroyed
under Louis XIV.) bore one of Philip de Champagne's masterpieces--a
picture representing the glorious exploits of the Cardinal. One of the
picture galleries called the "Gallery of Illustrious Men" contained
twenty-five full-length portraits of the great men of France, chosen
according to the Cardinal's estimate of greatness. At the foot of
each portrait was a little "key," or historical representation of
the principal acts of the original of the portrait, arranged as Fra
Angelico and Giotto arranged the portraits of Saint Dominick and Saint
François d'Assisi. Richelieu, who was not afflicted with false modesty,
had placed his own portrait among the portraits in his gallery of
the great men of France. Although he had amassed so many monuments
of pride, he had passed a large portion of his life in relative
poverty. He had travelled from the humble Episcopate to the steps of
the throne of France on an income of 25,000 livres. When he died his
income was nearly three millions of livres per annum,--the civil list
of a powerful monarch. He was not an expert hoarder of riches, like
Mazarin; he scattered money with full hands, while his master, the
King, netted game-bags in a corner, cooked, or did other useful work,
or gave himself up to his frugal pleasures.
According to Mme. de Motteville:
The King found himself reduced to the most miserable of earthly
lives, without a suite, without a Court, without power, and
consequently without pleasure and without honour. Thus a part of
his life passed at Saint Germain, where he lived like a private
individual; and while his enemies captured cities and won battles,
he amused himself by catching birds. That Prince was unhappy in all
manners, for he had not even the comfort of domestic life; he did
not love the Queen at all.... He was jealous of the grandeur of
his Minister ... whom he began to hate as soon as he perceived the
extreme authority which the Cardinal wielded in the kingdom ... and
as he was no happier without him than he was with him, he could not
be happy at all.
Cinq-Mars entered the King's service under the auspices of the
Cardinal. When the King saw the new face in his apartment he retired
into his darkest humour.
Cinq-Mars was very patient; he was attentive and modest, but the sound
of his voice and the sight of his face irritated the sickly monarch.
Days passed before the King addressed his new Master of the Robes.
One day he caught the long appealing look of the gentle eyes; he
answered it with a stare,--frowned, and looked again. That night he
could not sleep; he longed for the morning. When Cinq-Mars entered the
bed-chamber the King drew him to his side "and suddenly he loved him
violently and fatally, as in former times he loved young Baradas."
* * * * *
The courtiers were accustomed to the King's fancies, but his passion
for Cinq-Mars astonished them; it surpassed all that had preceded it.
It was an appalling and jealous love; exacting, suspicious, bitter,
stormy, and fruitful in tears and quarrels. Louis XIII. overwhelmed his
favourite with tokens of his tenderness; had it been possible he would
have chained the boy to his side. When Cinq-Mars was away from him he
was miserable.
Cinq-Mars was obliged to assist him in his new trade (he was
learning to be a carpenter), to stand at the bench holding tools and
taking measurements; and to listen to long harangues on dogs and on
bird-training. The King and his new favourite were seen together
constantly, driving the foxes to their holes and running in the snowy
fields catching blackbirds in the King's sweep-net; they hunted with a
dozen sportsmen who were said to be "low people and very bad company."
When they returned to the palace the King supped; when he had
finished his supper he went to bed, and then Cinq-Mars, "fatigued to
exasperation by the puerile duties of the day, cared for nothing but
to escape from his gloomy prison, and to forget the long, yellow face
and the interminable torrent of hunting stories." Stealing from the
château, he mounted his horse and hurried to Paris. He passed the
night as he pleased and returned to the château early in the morning,
worn out, haggard, and with nerves unstrung. Although he left the
château after the King retired to his bed, and returned from Paris
early in the morning, before the King awoke, Louis XIII. knew where he
had been and what he had been doing. Louis employed spies who watched
and listened. He was particularly jealous of Cinq-Mars's young friends;
he "made scenes" and reproached Cinq-Mars and the tormented boy
answered him hotly; then with cries, weeping bitterly, they quarrelled,
and the King went to Richelieu to complain of "M. le Grand." Richelieu
was State Confidant, and to him the King entrusted the reconciliations.
In 1639 (27th November) Louis wrote to the Cardinal:
You will see by the certificate that I send you, in what condition
is the reconciliation that you effected yesterday. When you put
your hand to an affair it cannot but go well. I give you good-day.
The certificate read as follows:
We, the undersigned, certify to all to whom these presents may
come, that we are very glad and well-satisfied with one another,
and that we have never been in such perfect unison as at present.
In faith of which we have signed the present certificate.
(signed) LOUIS; and by my order:
(signed) EFFIAT DE CINQ-MARS.
The laboured reconciliations were not durable; the months which
followed the signing of the certificate were one long tempest. The
objects of the King's bitterest jealousy were young men who formed
a society called _Les messieurs du Marais_ because they met every
evening at Mme. de Rohan's in the Palais Royal (the King then lived at
the Louvre). Louis could not be silent; he exposed his spite on all
occasions. January 5, 1640, he wrote to the Cardinal:
I am sorry to have to tell you again of the ill-humour of M. le
Grand. On his return from Rueil he gave me the packet which you
sent to me. I opened it and read it. Then I said to him:
"Monsieur, the Cardinal informs me that you have manifested great
desire to please me in all things; nevertheless you evince no wish
to please me in regard to that which I begged the Cardinal to speak
of: namely, your laziness." He answered that you did speak to him
of it, but that he could not change his character, and that in that
respect he should not do any better than he had been in the habit
of doing. That discourse angered me. I said to him that a man of
his condition ought to take some steps toward rendering himself
worthy to command armies (since he had told me that it was his
intention to lead armies). I told him that laziness was contrary
to military action. He answered me brusquely that he had never had
such an intention and that he had never pretended to have it. I
answered, "_Que si! You have!_" I did not wish to go any deeper
into the discourse (you know well what I mean). I then took up the
discourse on laziness. I told him that vice renders a man incapable
of doing anything good, and that he is good for nothing but the
society of the people of the Marais where he was nourished,--people
who have given themselves up to pleasure! I told him that if he
wishes to continue the life that he is now living among his old
friends, he may return to the place whence he came. He answered
arrogantly that he should be quite ready to do so!
I answered him: "If I were not wiser than you I know what I should
answer to that!" ... After that I said to him that he ought not
to speak to me in such fashion. He answered after the manner of
his usual discourse that at present his only duty appeared to be
to do good to me and to be agreeable to me and that as to such
business he could get along very well without it! He said that he
would as willingly be Cinq-Mars as to be M. le Grand; and that as
to changing his ways and his manner of life, he could not do it!
... And so it went! he pecking at me and I pecking at him until we
reached the courtyard; when I said to him that as he was in such
a humour he would do me pleasure if he would refrain from showing
himself before me any more. He bore witness that he would do that
same right willingly! I have not seen him since then.
Precisely as I have told you all that passed, in the presence of
Gordes.
LOUIS.
Post-Scriptum:
I have shown Gordes this memorandum before sending it, and he has
told me that there is nothing in it but the truth, exactly as he
heard it and saw it pass.
Cinq-Mars sulked and the King sulked, and as the quarrel promised to
endure indefinitely, Richelieu bestirred himself, left his quiet home
in Rueil and travelled to the house of the King to make peace between
the ill-assorted pair.
[Illustration: A GAME OF CHANCE IN THE 17TH CENTURY
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY SÉBASTIEN LECLERC]
Peace restored, Louis became joyful; he could not refuse his favourite
anything. Cinq-Mars made the most of his opportunity. But he could not
go far; the Cardinal barred his way. Cinq-Mars aspired to the peerage;
he aimed to be a duke, to marry a princess, and to sit among the
King's counsellors. Richelieu checked him, gave him rude orders,
scolded him as he scolded his valet, called him an "insolent little
fellow," and threatened to put him in a place "still lower" than the
place from which he had raised him.[81] One day, when Richelieu was
berating the favourite, he told him that he had appointed him to his
office in the King's house so that he (Richelieu) might have a reliable
spy, and that as he had been appointed for no other purpose, it would
be advisable for him to begin to do the work that he was expected to do.
The revelation was a cruel blow to the proud and sensitive boy, and in
the first moment of his anguish he conceived a ferocious hatred. It is
probable that the knowledge that the Cardinal had placed him near the
King's person against his will and in spite of his long and determined
resistance solely to the end that he might be degraded to an ignoble
office was the first cause of the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.
De Richelieu's ministry had never appeared more impregnable than it
appeared at that time. Far and near its policy had been triumphant.
Speaking of the position France had taken in Europe through the
guidance of Richelieu, an impartial foreigner said:
What a difference between the French Government as it was when
Richelieu received it from the kingdom and the state to which his
efforts raised it! Before his day the Spaniards were in progress
on all the frontiers; no longer advancing by impetuous attacks,
but entering calmly and steadily by systematic invasion. Richelieu
changed all that, and, led by him, France forced the Spaniards
beyond the frontier.
Until the Cardinal assumed command the united forces of the Empire, the
Catholic League and the Spanish armies, held not only the left bank
of the Rhine but all the land divided by that great central artery of
European life. By Richelieu's wise policy France regained dominion in
Alsace and in the greater part of the Rhenish country, the armies of
France took possession of central Germany, the Italian passes, which
had been closed to the men of France, were opened to them, and large
territories in upper Italy were seized and placed under French control;
and the changes were wrought, not by a temporary invasion, but by
orderly and skilfully planned campaigns.
* * * * *
The Cardinal's power had been made manifest everywhere. His rule had
been to the glory of France. Among other important results were the
triumphs of the French navies; the fleets, having proved their strength
in the Ligurian Sea, had menaced the ports of Spain. The Ligurian
Peninsula had been rent asunder by the revolt of two large provinces,
one of which had arisen proclaiming its independent rights as a
kingdom. There was, there had been, no end to Richelieu's diplomatic
improvements; his victories had carried ruin to the enemy; the
skirmishers of France had advanced to a point within two leagues of
Madrid. The Croquemitaine of France, who held in terror both the Court
and the canaille, had assured the Bourbons of an important place among
the empires of the world. The day of Spain was past; the day of France
was come.
[Illustration: MARQUIS DE CINQ MARS]
A great fête marked this period of power and glory.
Richelieu was a man of many ambitions, and he aspired to the admiration
of all of the population; he had extended his protecting arms over
literature and the lettered; he had founded the French Academy; but
he was not content; he was a man of too much independence and of too
enterprising a mind to leave all the literary honours to the doctors of
the law or to his mediums, Corneille and Rotrou, whose lines of work
he fixed to follow a plan outlined to suit his own ideas. Usually,
Richelieu's intellectual ambitions were quiescent, but at times the
pedant, dormant in his hard nature, awoke and impelled him to add
a few personal touches to the work of his agents. When under the
influence of his afflatus he collaborated with Desmarets, the author
of a dramatic poem entitled _Clovis_, and by the united efforts of
the unique literary team the tragedy _Mirame_ was delivered to the
world. Its first appearance was a Parisian event. None of the King's
armies had been mounted with such solicitude and prodigality, The
grand audience-room of the Palais Cardinal was built for _Mirame_;
it was spaced to hold three thousand spectators; the stage material
had been ordered from Italy by "Sieur Mazarini," ex-Papal Nuncio at
Paris. Richelieu himself had chosen the costumes and the decorations;
and he in person directed the rehearsals, and, as he supposed,
superintended the listing of all the invitations. The play was ready
for representation early in the year (1641).
First of all there was a general rehearsal for the critics, who were
represented by the men of letters and the comedians. The rehearsal took
place before the Court and the social world of all Paris. The invited
guests were seated by the Bishop of Chartres and by a president of the
Parliament of France. Though too new and too fresh in its magnificence,
the Audience Hall pleased the people exceedingly; when the curtain rose
they could hardly repress cries of admiration. The stage was lined on
both sides by splendid palaces and in the open space between the abodes
of luxury were most delicious gardens adorned with grottoes, statues,
fountains, and grand parterres of flowers descending terrace upon
terrace to the sea, which lifted its waves with an agitation as natural
as the movements of the real tide of a real ocean; on the broad waters
passed two great fleets; one of them appeared as if two leagues away.
Both fleets moved calmly on, passing like living things before the
spectators.
The same decorations and scenery served the five acts of the play; but
the sky was changed in each act, when the light faded, when the sun set
or rose, and when the moon and the stars appeared to mark the flight
of the hours. The play was composed according to the accepted formulas
of the day, and it was neither better nor worse than its fellows. In
its course the actors fought, poisoned each other, died, came to life,
and quarrelled over a handsome princess; and while the scene-shifters
manipulated the somewhat crude inventions of the stage scenery, and
while the actors did their utmost to develop the plot to the best
advantage, the master of the palace acted as chief of the _Claque_
and tried by every means in his power to arouse the enthusiasm of the
audience. He stood in the front of his box and, leaning forward into
space, manifested his pleasure by his looks; at times he called the
attention of the people and imposed silence so that the finer passages
might be heard.[82]
At the end of the play a curtain representing clouds fell upon the
scene, and a golden bridge rolled like a tide to the feet of Anne of
Austria. The Queen arose, crossed the bridge, and found herself in a
magnificent ball-room; then, with the Prince and the Princess, she
danced an impetuously ardent and swinging figure, and when that dance
was over, the Bishop of Chartres, in Court dress, and baton in hand,
like a _maître d'hôtel_, led the way to a fine collation. Later in the
year the serviceable Bishop was made Archbishop of Rheims.
Politics interfered with _Mirame_. The play was assailed by
difficulties similar to those which met Napoleon's _Vie de César_ under
the Second Empire. The Opposition eagerly seized the occasion to annoy
"Croquemitaine"; open protestations were circulated to the effect that
the play was not worth playing. Some, rising above the question of
literary merit, said that the piece was morally objectionable because
it contained allusions to Anne of Austria's episode with Buckingham.
Richelieu became the scapegoat of the hour; even the King had something
to say regarding his Minister's literary venture. Louis was not gifted
with critical discrimination; he knew it, and his timid pride and his
prudence restrained him from launching into observations upon subjects
with which he was not fitted to cope; but guided by the cherub detailed
to protect the mentally incompetent, he struck with instinctive
subtlety at the one vulnerable point in the Cardinal's armour and
declared that he had nothing to say regarding the preciosity of the
play, but that he had been "shocked by the questionable composition
of the audience." It relieved the King's consciousness of his own
inferiority to "pinch the Cardinal." He told Monsieur that he had
been "shocked" when he realised "what species of society" he had been
invited to meet. Monsieur, seizing the occasion to strike his enemy,
answered that, to speak "frankly," he also had "been shocked" when he
perceived "little Saint Amour among the Cardinal's guests." The royal
brothers turned the subject in every light, and the more they studied
it the darker grew its aspect. They agreed in thinking that the King's
delicacy had been grossly outraged; they worked upon the fact until
it assumed the proportions of a personal insult. Richelieu, visited
by the indignant pair, was galvanised by the double current of their
wrath. He knew that Saint Amour had not been in any earthly locality by
his will; tact, if not religious prejudice, would have forbidden the
admission of a personage of the doubtful savour of Saint Amour to the
presence of the King. But Monsieur and the King had seen with their
own eyes, and as no one would have dared to enter the Palais Cardinal
uninvited, it was an undisputable fact that some one had tampered with
the invitations. Richelieu's detectives were put upon the scent and
they discovered that an Abbé who "could not refuse a woman anything"
had been entrusted with the invitations-list.
Richelieu could not punish the amiable lady who had unconsciously
sealed the Abbé's doom; but justice was wrought, and absolute ignorance
of facts permits us to hope that it fell short of the justice meted
out to Puylaurens. It was said that the Abbé had been sent back to his
village. Wherever he was "sent," Louis XIII. refused to be comforted,
and to the end of his days he told the people who surrounded him that
the Cardinal had invited him to his palace to meet Saint Amour.
Richelieu's life was embittered by the incident, and to the last he was
tormented by a confused impression of the fête which he had believed
was to be the coming glory of his career. But an isolated detail could
not alter facts, and it was universally known that his importance was
"of all the colours." _Mirame_ had given the people an idea of the
versatility of Richelieu's grandeur and of the composite quality of his
power, and M. le Grand knew what he might expect should he anger the
Cardinal. Cinq-Mars was always at the King's heels, and he knew the
extent of Louis's docility.
The Cinq-Mars Conspiracy took shape in the months which immediately
followed the presentation of _Mirame_. As the details of the conspiracy
may be found in any history, I shall say only this: When an enterprise
is based upon sentiments like the King's passion for his Grand
Equerry[83] and the general hatred of Richelieu, it is not necessary to
search for reasonable causes.
When the first steps in the conspiracy were taken Louis XIII., in
his tenderness for Cinq-Mars and his bitter jealousy of Richelieu,
unconsciously played the part of instigator.
It soothed the wounded pride of the monarch to hear his tyrant
ridiculed, and he incited his "dear friend," the Marquis d'Effiat,
to scoff at the Cardinal. Cinq-Mars and all the others were taken
red-handed; doubt was impossible. In the words of Mme. de Motteville:
"It was one of the most formidable, and at the same time one of the
most extraordinary plots found in history; for the King was, tacitly,
the chief of the conspirators." Monsieur enthusiastically entered into
the plot; he ran to the Queen with the whole story; he told her the
names of the conspirators, and urged her to take part in the movement.
"It must be innocent," he insisted; "if it were not the King would not
be engaged in it."[84]
Richelieu's peaceful days were over. He was restless and suspicious.
Suddenly, in June, 1642, when Louis XIII. was sick in Narbonne (and
when Richelieu was sick in Tarascon) M. le Grand was arrested and
delivered to the Cardinal for the crime of high treason. He deserved
his fate. He had led Monsieur to treat with Spain; but the real cause
of his death--if not of his disgrace--lay in the fact that he had lost
his hold upon the King's love.
"The King had ceased to love him," said a contemporary. The end came
suddenly and without a note of warning. The King, awaking as from a
dream, remembered all the services that Richelieu had rendered unto
France. He was so grateful that he hastened to Tarascon and begged
Richelieu's pardon for having wished "to lose him," in other words, for
having wished to accomplish his fall. The King was ashamed, and despite
his sickness he ordered his bearers to carry him into Richelieu's
bed-chamber where the two gentlemen passed several hours together,
each in his own bed, effecting a reconciliation.
But their hearts were not in their words; wrongs like those in question
between the Cardinal and the King cannot be forgotten.[85] The King had
abetted a conspiracy against the Cardinal's life, and had the Cardinal
been inclined to forget it, the King's weak self-reproach would have
kept it in the mind of his contemplated victim. Louis could not refrain
from harking back to his sin; he humiliated himself, he begged the
Cardinal to forgive him; he gave up everything, including the amiable
young criminal who, in Scriptural language, had lain in his bosom and
been to him as a daughter. The judgment of the moralist is disarmed by
the fact that Louis was, and always had been, a physical wreck, morally
handicapped by the essence of his being. He had loved Cinq-Mars with
unreasoning passion; he was forced by circumstances to sacrifice him;
but we need not pity him; there was much of the monster in him, and
before the head of Cinq-Mars fell, all the King's love for his victim
had passed away.
Louis XIII. was of all the sovereigns of France the one most notably
devoted to the public interest; in crises his self-sacrifice resembled
the heroism of the martyr; but the defects of his qualities were of
such a character that he would have been incomprehensible had he not
been sick in body and in mind.
During the crisis which followed the exposure of Cinq-Mars's conspiracy
Monsieur surpassed himself; he was alternately trembler, liar,
sniveller, and informer; his behaviour was so abject that the echoes
of his shame reverberated throughout France and, penetrating the walls
of the Tuileries, reached the ears of his daughter. Monsieur shocked
Mademoiselle's theological conception of Princes of the Blood; she
could not understand how a creature partaking of the nature of the
Deity could be so essentially contemptible; she was crushed by the
enigma presented by her father.
The close of the reign resembled the dramatic tragedies in which the
chief characters die in the fifth act; all the principal personages
departed this life within a period of a few months. Marie de Médicis
was the first to go. She died at Cologne 3d July, 1642, not, as was
reported, in a garret, or in a hovel, but in a house in which Rubens
had lived. If we may judge by the names of her legatees, she died
surrounded by at least eighty servants. It is true that she owed debts
to the tradesmen who furnished her household with the necessaries of
life, and it is true that her people had advanced money when their
living expenses required such advances; but the two facts prove no
more than that royal households in which there is no order closely
resemble the disorderly households of the ordinary classes. People of
respectability in our own midst are now living regardless of system,
devoid of economy, and indebted to their tradesmen, as the household
of Marie de Médicis lived in the seventeenth century. To the day of
her death the aged Queen retained possession of silver dishes of all
kinds, and had her situation justified the rumours of extreme poverty
which have been circulated since then she would have pawned them or
sold them. We may be permitted to trust that Marie de Médicis did
not end her days tormented by material necessities. She died just
at the time when she had begun to resort to expedients. The old and
corpulent sovereign had lived an agitated life; her chief foes were
of her own temperament. She was the victim of paroxysmal wrath and
it was generally known that she had made at least one determined
though unfruitful attempt to whip her husband, the heroic Henry IV.,
Conqueror of Paris. Her life had not been of a character to inspire
the love of the French people, and when she died no one regretted
her. Had not the Court been forced by the prevailing etiquette to
assume mourning according to the barbarous and complicated rites of
the ancient monarchy, her death would have passed unperceived. The
customs of the old regimen obliged Mademoiselle to remain in a darkened
room, surrounded by such draperies as were considered essential to the
manifestation of royal grief. The world mourned for the handsome boy
who had been forced to enter the King's house, and to act as the King's
favourite against his will, to die upon the scaffold. Monsieur was
despised for his part in Cinq-Mars's death. Mademoiselle was shunned
because she was her father's daughter and her obligatory mourning
was a convenient veil. Her own record of the death of the Queen is a
frankly sorrowful statement of her appreciation of the facts in the
case, and of her knowledge of her father's guilt:
I observed the retreat which my mourning imposed upon me with all
possible regularity and rigour. If any one had come to see me it
would not have been difficult for me to refuse to receive them;
however, my case was the case of all who are undergoing misfortune;
no one called for me.
Three months after the conspiracy against de Richelieu was exposed,
Cinq-Mars was beheaded (12th September), and the Lyonnais, who had
assembled in the golden mists of the season of the vintage to see him
die, cried out against his death and said that it was "a sin against
the earth to take the light from his gentle eyes." De Thou, Cinq-Mars's
friend, was beheaded also. The victims faced death like tried soldiers;
their attitude as they halted upon the confines of eternity elicited
the commendation of the people. The fact that the people called their
manner of leaving the world "beautiful and admirable" proves that
simplicity in man's conduct, as in literature and in horticultural
architecture, was out of date.
When the condemned were passing out of the tribunal they met the judges
who had but just pronounced their sentence. Both Cinq-Mars and de Thou
"embraced the judges and offered them fine compliments."
The people of Lyons--civilians and soldiers--were massed around the
Court House and in the neighbourhood. Cinq-Mars and de Thou bowed low
to them all, then mounted into the tumbrel, with faces illumined by
spiritual exaltation. In the tumbrel they joyfully embraced and crying
"_Au revoir_," promised to meet in Paradise. They saluted the multitude
like conquerors. De Thou clapped his hands when he saw the scaffold;
Cinq-Mars ascended first; he turned, took one step forward, and stopped
short; his eyes rested fondly upon the people; then with a bright smile
he saluted them; after they covered his head he stood for an instant
poised as if to spring from earth to heaven, one foot advanced, his
hand upon his side. His wide, pathetic glance embraced the multitude,
then calmly and without fear, again firmly pacing the scaffold, he went
forward to the block.
At the present time it is the fashion to die with less ostentation,
but revolutions in taste ought not to prevent our doing justice to the
victims of the Cinq-Mars Conspiracy. They were heroically brave to the
last, and the people could not forget them. Mademoiselle's grief was
fostered by the general sympathy for the unfortunate boy who had paid
so dearly for his familiarity with the King. As all her feelings were
recorded by her own hand, we are in possession of her opinions on the
subjects which were of interest in her day. Of the matter of Cinq-Mars
and de Thou she said:
I regretted it deeply, because of my consideration for them, and
because, unfortunately, Monsieur was involved in the affair through
which they perished. He was so involved that it was even believed
that the single deposition made by him was the thing which weighed
most heavily upon them and caused their death. The memory of it
renews my grief so that I cannot say any more.
Mademoiselle was artless enough to believe that her father would be
sorrowful and embarrassed when he returned.
She did not know him.
In the winter after Cinq-Mars died, Gaston returned to the Luxembourg
radiant with roguish smiles; he was delighted to be in Paris.
He came to my house, [reported Mademoiselle,] he supped at my
house, where there were twenty-four violins. He was as gay as if
Messieurs Cinq-Mars and de Thou had not been left by the roadside.
I avow that I could not see him without thinking of them, and that
through all my joy of seeing him again I felt that his joy gave me
grief.
Not long after she thus recorded her impressions she found, to her
cost, how little reliance she could place upon her father, and all her
filial illusions vanished.
Richelieu was the next to disappear from the scene. He had long been
sick; his body was paralysed and putrid with abscesses and with
ulcers. Master and Man, Richelieu and Louis were intently watching to
see which should be the first to die. Each one of them was forming
projects for a time when, freed from the arbitration of the other, he
should be in a position to act his independent will and to turn the
remnant of his fleeting life to pleasurable profit. In that, his final
state, the Cardinal offered the people of France a last and supreme
spectacle, and of all the dramas that he had shown them, it was the
most original and the most impressive. The day after the execution
of Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, who had remained to the last hour in Lyons,
entered his portable room and set out for Paris. His journey covered
a period of six weeks, and the people who ran to the highway from
all directions to see him pass were well regaled. In those last days
when the Cardinal travelled he was carried in procession. First of
all were heavy wains hauling the material of an inclined plane; at a
short distance behind the wains followed a small army corps escorting
the Cardinal's travelling room; the room was always transported by
twenty-four men of the Cardinal's body-guard, who marched through sun
and rain with heads uncovered. In the portable room were three pieces
of furniture, a chair, a table, and a splendid bed--and on the bed lay
a sick man!--better still for the sightseers, a sick Cardinal! The
crowds pressed close to the roadside. They who were masters of the art
of death looked on disease with curiosity; they knew that they could
lop off the heads of the fine lords whose grandeur embittered the lives
of the peasants and the workmen as easily as they could beat down nuts
from trees; yet there lay the real King of France in his doll's house,
and he could neither live nor die,--that was droll!
* * * * *
The chair in the little room stood ready for the visitors who paid
their respects to the sick man when the travellers halted.
The table was carried for the convenience of the secretary, who wrote
upon it, sorted his papers, dusted his ink with scented gold-powder,
and pasted great wafers over the silken floss and the English ribands
which tied his private correspondence.
Richelieu, as he travelled, dictated army orders and diplomatic
despatches. When the little procession arrived at a halting-place,
everything was ready for its reception; the house in which the Cardinal
was to lodge had been prepared, the entire floor to be occupied by him
had been gutted so that no inner partitions could interfere with his
progress. The wains stopped, the inclined plane was set in position
against the side of the house, and the heavy machine bearing the
sick-room was rolled slowly into the breach and engulfed without a
tremor.
When it was possible the room was drawn aboard a boat and the Cardinal
was transported by water; in that case when he reached home he was
disembarked opposite his palace near the Port au Foin, and borne
through the crowd of people, who struggled and crushed each other so
that they might know how a Cardinal-Minister looked, lying in his bed
and entering Paris, dying, yet triumphant, after he had vanquished all
his enemies.
Richelieu saw all that passed; his perceptions were as keen and his
judgment was as just as in the days of his vigorous manhood. Entering
Paris in his bed on his return from Lyons, he saw among the prostrate
courtiers of his own party a man who had been compromised by the
conspiracy, and then and there he summoned him from his knees and
ordered him to present himself at the palace and give an account of
his actions. Richelieu's word was law; no one questioned it. The weeks
which followed the return from Lyons were tedious. After the exposure
of the conspiracy the Cardinal suspected every one, the King included.
His tired eyes searched the corners of the King's bed-chamber for
assassins. He strove to force the King to dismiss some of the officers
of his guard, but at that Louis revolted.
After violent discussions and long recriminative dialogues the Cardinal
resorted to heroic means. He shut himself up in his palace, refused
to receive the King's ambassadors, and threatened to send in his
resignation. Then the King yielded, and peace was made.
The two moribunds were together when the precautions for the national
safety were taken against Gaston d'Orléans. In his declaration Louis
told the deputies that he had forgiven his brother five separate and
distinct times, and that he should forgive him once more and once
only. The declaration made it plain that the King was firm in his
determination to protect himself against his brother. Gaston was to be
stripped of all power and to be deprived of the government of Auvergne;
his gendarmerie and his light cavalry were to be suppressed. The King
made the declaration to Mathieu Molé, December 1, 1642. That same day
the Cardinal passed a desperate crisis, and it was known that he must
die.
He prepared for death with the firmness befitting a man of his calibre.
When his confessor asked him if he had forgiven his enemies, he
answered that he had "no enemies save the enemies of the state."[86]
There was some truth in the answer, and in that truth lay his title
to glory. At home or abroad, in France or in foreign lands, Richelieu
received the first force of every blow aimed at France. He was the
Obstacle, and all hostility used him as a mark. He was the shield
as well as the sword of the State. His policy was governed by two
immutable ideas: 1. His own will by the will of the King; 2. France.
His object was to subject all individual wills to the supreme royal
will, and to develop French influence throughout Europe. We have
seen the position which France had taken under his direction; he
had accomplished work fully as important in the State. "The idea of
monarchical power was akin to a religious dogma," said Ranke, "and he
who rejected the idea expected to be pursued with the same rigour, and
with nearly the same formalities, with which national justice pursued
the heretic. The time for an absolute monarchy was ripe. Louis XIV.
might come; he would find his bed ready.
Richelieu gave up the ghost December 4, 1642. The news was immediately
carried to the King, who received it with the comment, "A great
politician is dead."
In France the feeling of relief was general. No one doubted that the
Cardinal's death would change everything. The exiles expected to be
recalled; the prisoners expected to be set free; the Opposition looked
forward to taking the reins of State, and the great, who in spite of
their greatness were probably more or less badly fed, dreamed of an
Abbey of Thélème. The mass of Frenchmen loved change for the sake of
novelty.
The Parisians had hoped for the spectacle of a fine funeral, and they
were not disappointed. Richelieu's body lay in state in its Cardinal's
robes, and so many people visited him that the procession consumed
one whole day and night passing his bier. The parade lasted nearly a
week. The burial took place the thirteenth day of December. It was a
public triumph. The funeral car, drawn by six horses, was considered
remarkable. But the changes hoped for did not arrive. La Grande
Mademoiselle was the first to recognise the fact that Louis XIII. had
given the kingdom false hopes. It had been supposed that the Cardinal's
demise would give the King power to make the people happy. The Cardinal
was dead, and there had been no change. Despite all that Gaston had
done, Mademoiselle loved him; she could not separate him from her idea
of the glory of her house. She noted in her memoirs the visit made to
the Louvre in his behalf:
As soon as I knew that Richelieu was dead I went to the King to beg
him to show some kindness to Monsieur. I thought that I had taken
a very favourable occasion for moving him to pity, but he refused
to do what I asked him, and the next day he went to the palace to
register the declaration against Monsieur (as the subject of it is
known I need not mention it or explain it here). When he entered
Parliament I wished to throw myself at his feet; I wished to beg of
him not to go to that extremity against Monsieur; but some one had
warned him of my intention and he sent word to me forbidding me to
appear. Nothing could make him swerve from his injurious designs.
The 4th December, after Mademoiselle made her unsuccessful visit, Louis
XIII. summoned Mazarin to finish the work that Richelieu had begun.
The 5th December Louis sent out a circular letter announcing the death
of Richelieu; he cut short the rumours of a political crisis by stating
that he was resolved to maintain all the establishments by him decreed
in Council with the late Prime Minister, and he further stated that to
advance the foreign affairs of France and also to advance the internal
interests of the State,--as he had always advanced them,--he should
maintain the existent national policy.
The riches amassed by the Cardinal passed into the hands of his heirs,
and the King supplemented the legacies by the distribution of a few
official appointments. Richelieu was gone from earth, but his spirit
still governed France. "All the Cardinal's evils are right here!" cried
Mademoiselle; "when he went, they remained."
Montglat said that they "found it difficult to announce the Cardinal's
death. No one was willing to take the first step. They spoke in
whispers. It was as if they were afraid that his soul would come back
to punish them for saying that he could die." It was said that "even
the King had so respected the Cardinal when he was alive, that he
feared him when he was dead."
Under such conditions it was difficult to make a change of any kind;
nevertheless, after weeks had passed--when the King had accustomed
himself to independent action--a few changes came about gradually and
stealthily, one by one.
The thirteenth day of January, 1643, Monsieur was given permission
to call at Saint Germain and pay his respects to the King. The 19th,
Bassompierre and two other lords emerged from the Bastille.
In February the Vendômes returned from exile. Old Mme. de Guise also
took the road to Paris, and when she arrived her granddaughter, La
Grande Mademoiselle, received her with open arms, and gave her a ball
and a comedy, and collations composed of confitures, and fruits trimmed
with English ribands; and when the ball was over and the guests were
departing in the grey fog of early morning, old Madame and young
Mademoiselle laid their light heads upon the same pillow and dreamed
that Cardinals were always dying and exiles joyfully returning to their
own.
As time went on the King's clemency increased and he issued pardons
freely. The reason was too plain to every one; the end was at hand.
Paris had acquired a taste for her kindly sovereign. Louis knew that
he was nearing the tideless sea,--he spoke constantly of his past; he
exhibited his skeleton limbs covered with great white scars to his
family and his familiar friends; he told the story of his wrongs.
He told how he had been brought to the state that he was in by his
"executioners of doctors" and by "the tyranny of the Cardinal." He said
that the Cardinal had never permitted him to do things as he had wished
to do them, and that he had compelled him to do things which had been
repugnant to him, so that at last _even he_ "whom Heaven had endowed
with all the endurances," had succumbed under the load that had been
heaped upon him. His friends listened and were silent.
To the last Louis XIII. was faithful to the sacraments and to France.
He performed all his secular duties. When he lay upon his death-bed he
summoned his deputies so that they might hear him read the declaration
bestowing the title of Regent upon Anne of Austria and delivering the
actual power of the Crown into the hands of a prospective Council duly
nominated.
Louis XIII. had put his house in order: he had nothing more to do on
earth. His sickness was long and tedious, and attended by all that
makes death desirable; by cruel pains, by distressful nausea, and by
all the torments of a death by inches. The unhappy man was long in
dying; now rallying, now sinking, with fluctuations which deranged the
intrigues of the Court and agitated Saint Germain.
The King lay in the new château (the one built by his father); nothing
remains of it but the "Pavillon Henri IV". Anne of Austria lived with
the Court in the old château (the one familiar to all Parisians of the
present day).
On "good days" the arrangement afforded the sufferer relative repose;
but on "bad days," when he approached a crisis, the etiquette of the
Court was torment. The courtiers hurried over to the new château to
witness the death-agony. They crowded the sick-room and whispered with
the celebrities who travelled daily from Paris to Saint Germain to
visit the dying King. In the courtyard of the château the travellers'
horses neighed and pawed the ground. Confused sounds and tormenting
light entered by the windows; the air of the room was stifling and
Louis begged his guests, in the name of mercy, to withdraw from his bed
and let him breathe.
The crowds assembled in the courtyard hissed or applauded as the
politicians entered or drove away. On the highway before the château
the idle people stood waiting to receive the last sigh of the King, to
be in at the death, or to make merry at the expense of celebrated men.
While the masters visited the dying King the coachmen, footmen,
on-hangers, and other tributaries sat upon the carriage boxes, declared
their politics, and issued their manifestos, and their voices rose
above the neighing of the horses and ascended to the sick-room. When
the tantalising periodically recurrent crises which kept the Court and
country on foot were past, the celebrities and men of Parliament, with
many of the courtiers, fled to Paris, where they forgot the sights and
the sounds of the sick-room in the perfumed air of the Parisian salons.
Mademoiselle wrote of that time: "There never were as many balls as
there were that year; and I went to them all."
The final crisis came the thirteenth day of May. Immediately after the
King gave up the ghost, the Queen and all the Court retired from the
death-chamber and made ready to depart from Saint Germain early in the
morning. The moving was like breaking camp. At daybreak long files of
baggage wagons laden with furniture and with luggage began to descend
the hill of Saint Germain, and soon afterward crowded chariots, drawn
by six horses, and groups of cavaliers, joined the lumbering wains. The
suppressed droning of many voices accompanied the procession. At eleven
o'clock silence fell upon the long, writhing line, and an army corps
surrounding the royal mourners passed, escorted by the Marshals of
France, dukes and peers, and the gentlemen of the Court,--all mounted.
The last of the battalions filed by the van of the procession, and the
chariots and the wains moved on, mingling with the servitors and men of
all trades, who in that day followed in the train of all the great.
* * * * *
Saint Germain was vacant. The last errand boy vanished, the murmur of
the moving throng died in the distance; the shroud of silence wrapped
the new château, and the curtain fell upon the fifth act of the reign
of Louis XIII. There remained upon the stage only a corpse, light as a
plume, watched by a lieutenant and his guard.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 60: Mademoiselle was ten years old at that time.]
[Footnote 61: The Palais-Royal of to-day.]
[Footnote 62: _Alex. Hardy et le théâtre français_, Eugène Rigal.]
[Footnote 63: Sorel, _La maison des jeux_. The book was published in
1642, but M. E. Rigal supposes that the disorders and the complaints
cited in it date from a previous epoch.]
[Footnote 64: _La pratique du théâtre._]
[Footnote 65: Certainly the desire was not lacking.--AUTHOR.]
[Footnote 66: _Le théâtre au temps du Corneille_, Gustave Reynier. The
first representation of the _Cid_ took place either in December, 1636,
or in January, 1637.]
[Footnote 67: See dedicatory letter accompanying a comedy played in
1632 and published in 1636. _Galanteries du duc d'Ossonne._ Mairet.]
[Footnote 68: _Aminta_ was played in 1573, but it was not imprinted
until 1581, when it was first known outside of Italy.]
[Footnote 69: _Pierre Corneille_, Petit de Julleville.]
[Footnote 70: _Pierre Corneille_, Petit de Julleville.]
[Footnote 71: Jules Lemaître.]
[Footnote 72: _Manual de l'histoire de la littérature française._ F.
Brunetière.]
[Footnote 73: _Corneille_, Lanson.]
[Footnote 74: _Cyrano de Bergerac_, E. Rostand.]
[Footnote 75: "There are agreeable things in _Bejazet_, but there is
nothing perfectly beautiful in it, nothing to carry you away in spite
of yourself, none of the tirades which make you shiver when you read
Corneille. My daughter, take good care not to compare Racine to him.
Distinguish the difference between them" (16th March, 1672).]
[Footnote 76: Henriette, third daughter of Henry IV., was "accorded
with" or promised in betrothal to Comte de Soissons a few months after
her birth; the Comte was between five and six years old. Marie de
Médicis did not consider the infantile betrothal binding; when she saw
fit to marry her daughter she bestowed her hand upon Charles I., the
King of England (1625).]
[Footnote 77: Ferdinand, third son of Philip III.]
[Footnote 78: The Cardinal-Infant had been forced to leave his camp and
go to Brussels to recover his health. He died in Brussels soon after
his arrival, more beloved by the French people--so it was said--than
was becoming to a King of Spain. (See _l'Histoire de la France sous
Louis XIII_. A. Bazin.)]
[Footnote 79: _Mémoires de Michel de Marolles_ (Abbé de Villeloin); _La
Conspiration Cinq-Mars_ (Mlle. J. P. Basserie).]
[Footnote 80: Dulaure's _Histoire de Paris_.]
[Footnote 81: _Mémoires_, Montglat.]
[Footnote 82: Fontenelle's _Vie de Pierre Corneille_.]
[Footnote 83: Cinq-Mars had been promoted to the position of Grand
Equerry.]
[Footnote 84: Motteville.]
[Footnote 85: Motteville.]
[Footnote 86: Montglat.]