The Cardinal and his palaces--The château and town of Richelieu--The
Palais-Cardinal--Richelieu’s household, daily life, and friends--The
Hôtel de Rambouillet--Mademoiselle de Gournay--Boisrobert and the first
Academicians--Entertainments at the Palais-Cardinal--_Mirame_.
The restless, ambitious energy and the passion for detail which made
Cardinal de Richelieu the hardest worker of his time in politics,
were thrown equally into his characteristic amusements. His love of
building and furnishing splendidly carried him far beyond such pleasant
country-houses as Rueil, Limours, or Bois-le-Vicomte, luxurious as they
were. The Palais-Cardinal itself, in the heart of Paris and almost
royal, had certain limitations, the architect being blamed for a lack
of height and dignity. Le Mercier excused himself, we are told, by the
Cardinal’s own orders: he desired to give no cause for jealousy to the
great ones of the kingdom who did not love him “because of the extreme
hauteur with which he treated them, and to show moderation, even in the
disposing of his palace, in the sight of those powerful persons who
were envious of such prodigious credit and grandeur.”
No scruples interfered in the lonely valley of the Mable, where for
miles around the name of Richelieu now had no rival. Even Champigny,
the once dreaded house of the Montpensiers, had come into the
Cardinal’s possession by a more or less forced exchange with Gaston
d’Orléans, his little daughter’s untrustworthy guardian. The fine old
château was pulled down; its former outbuildings make the château of
to-day; and the chapel, with its precious windows, its tombs and
picturesque cloister, was only saved by the Pope’s refusal to consent
to its destruction. The Cardinal-Duc, though First Minister of France
and head of her army and navy, could not flatly disobey the Church in a
private matter.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE RICHELIEU
FROM AN OLD PRINT]
There is more actually left of the old Montpensier buildings than of
the magnificent palace, foreshadowing the splendour of Versailles,
into which Cardinal de Richelieu transformed the river-fortress of
his ancestors. Wide lawns, stiff alleys and avenues, still moats with
water-lilies, one small pavilion looking sadly over the trees towards a
high gateway where no one seems to enter; this is all that remains of
the far-famed Château de Richelieu.
It was in the year 1625, soon after he came to power, that the
Cardinal visited Richelieu with Madame de Combalet, and resolved on
the transformation. After this the work went on for years, and was
hardly finished when he died, though long before that the palace was
the admiration of Europe, only surpassed in France by Fontainebleau.
It was approached by an avenue a mile and a quarter long, ending in
an immense _demi-lune_ on which the first court opened by a stately
gateway with flanking pavilions. This court led to a second; a bridge
over the moat which, as in old days, surrounded the actual château,
gave admittance to another gateway under a dome, guarded by a figure
of Renown and other mythological statues. Within this was the _cour
d’honneur_, a square of great buildings, with high pavilions at the
four corners and in the centre opposite the gateway. Here was the grand
staircase of variegated marble; and here, after the ruin of the House
of Montmorency, stood the famous Slaves of Michel Angelo, brought from
the Duke’s Château of Écouen. Statues and busts were everywhere.
The further front, beyond another bridge, looked upon square gardens
“embroidered with flowers,” where peacocks strutted, and through which
flowed the imprisoned Mable in a broad canal full of fish. Beyond this
again was another vast half-moon space of garden and parterre, with
statues, fountains, grottoes, an orangery, and a chapel; and all was
surrounded by the great deer-park and the woods in ordered beauty, long
alleys striking into them, lost in the shade.
The decoration, in and out, of this wonderful place shared the
Cardinal’s thoughts with the keenest interests of his political
life; and the collection of works of art, for Richelieu and the
Palais-Cardinal, meant in itself a large correspondence. Besides all
this, he had undertaken to create a town outside the gates of his
new palace, its main street to be of _hôtels_ on one dignified plan,
after the model of the Place Royale, built for themselves by his chief
officers and the nobles whom he meant to attend his Court at Richelieu.
That Court was never held, but the town rose out of the earth, “as if
by enchantment,” with all kinds of privileges and immunities granted
by the King, and its symmetrical buildings have long survived their
_raison d’être_, the château. There is indeed more life now in that
seventeenth-century street than when La Fontaine wrote of its admired
but monotonous rows of houses:
“La plupart sont inhabités;
Je ne vis personne en la rue;
Il m’en déplaît; j’aime aux cités
Un peu de bruit et de cohue.”
The Cardinal’s devoted friend, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, acted as
surveyor of the works at Richelieu, and in a letter to him in June
1632, between the execution of Marillac and Monsieur’s invasion of
Languedoc, we have evidence of the way in which every exterior and
interior detail was thought out by an unresting brain. The painting of
the rooms was now in full swing, being mostly designed by Simon Vouet,
the King’s favourite painter, and carried out by him and other artists.
After giving orders as to the decoration of a large room above the
entrance, the Cardinal proceeds:
“The vaulted cabinet at the side should be painted in _grisaille_ on
the stone vaulting, partly by the painter from Lyons, and partly by
other painters, who will enrich the _grisaille_ with gold. M. de
Bordeaux, being on the spot, will make them agree together as to what
each shall do. In this cabinet there must be a wainscot six feet high
with a recess to hold rarities, and the said wainscot shall be painted
in _grisaille_ of one tint and gilded to match the vaulting. M. Vouet
can very well design the paintings.”
Architectural details regarding the level of different rooms, their
respective heights, their flat or vaulted ceilings, fill a good part
of the letter. Everywhere there are six-foot wainscotings with shelves
or recesses for “rarities”; for His Eminence’s collection of _objets
d’art_ was already famous in Europe.
Then he goes on to the gardens.
“My uncle tells me that the canal at Richelieu is full of weeds. At
the end of the summer, when the lawns are levelled and the masons are
no longer working on the banks of the said canal, it must be entirely
drained and all the weeds must be rooted up and burnt in its bed; and
when it is clean and dry let it be filled again, and put a boat on it,
and make a bargain with a strong and vigorous man who has nothing else
to do, that he will not suffer a weed in it but will tear them up as
they grow, which may be done with tools of iron made for the purpose.
In that country it suffices a man if he have enough to live on, so that
I think a hundred francs or forty crowns will acquit me.”
With quite as eager an interest, both now and again later, even when
Monsieur is “drawing towards Languedoc” and political storms are
darkening all the horizon, he writes of pictures from Mantua that he
is sending to Richelieu, of the preservation, with new floors and
beams, of his father’s old rooms--a fancy which, in Mademoiselle de
Montpensier’s opinion, spoiled the grandeur of the house--of building a
park wall; and last, not least, of the new town and the houses that his
friends are building there. A little hurry, he thinks, would not be out
of place, for he is bent on making Richelieu, his own town, a centre of
trade, of justice, of enlightenment, to all the western country.
Though almost incredible, it appears to be a fact that the Cardinal
died in 1642 without ever having visited his new palace and little
city of Richelieu. Various royal and distinguished guests, however,
were entertained there in his lifetime by his niece or other
representatives.
But Paris knew the Cardinal intimately well. His last eight years of
life and work were chiefly spent at the Palais-Cardinal. From its
completion, in the winter of 1633-4, he lived there in almost royal
splendour. Though the exterior may have suffered from jealousy in high
places, the apartments were far more gorgeous, more heavily luxurious,
than those at Richelieu--which must have possessed, from descriptions,
a kind of cool beauty and delicate grace suited to the tender lines
and colouring of Poitou. At the Palais-Cardinal, the windows were
glazed with “large squares of crystal mounted in silver.” Rooms,
halls, staircases, galleries, cabinets, were a blaze of colour; there
were ceilings all gold, with allegorical pictures in mosaic, to the
Cardinal’s glory. The walls were hung with pictures by the greatest
artists, French and Italian; there was a gallery of famous men, some
of the portraits painted by Philippe de Champagne, others by Simon
Vouet. The furniture throughout was magnificent, and the art treasures
of every kind represented the work of collectors all over Europe. The
gardens, in those early days, were charming in their formal beauty;
lawns and clipped box hedges, a mosaic of flowers, long alleys of
trees, and a high terrace with a famous iron-work balustrade which
was destroyed in 1786 by the bad taste of the Duc de Chartres, then
possessor of the palace.
The Cardinal’s household was large, and devoted to him; whatever
his character at Court and abroad, at home he was neither an ogre
nor a sphinx, but a hard-working, autocratic, fiery, not ungenerous
gentleman. His chaplains and almoners could bear witness to his
widespread charity, ranging from the sick and poor in the streets
of Paris to peasants ruined by war, and from colleges and hospitals
to small forgotten convents which found themselves supplied, by his
orders, with bread and meat they had no money to buy.
[Illustration: VILLE DE RICHELIEU
FROM AN OLD PRINT]
The Cardinal’s household included at least five-and-twenty pages
of noble birth, who received the same training in arms, horsemanship,
mathematics, and dancing as if they had belonged to Royalty. A number
of “gentlemen of condition” waited on him constantly and dined at his
second table; the first was reserved for himself--when well enough to
be there--and for his intimate friends, relations, and special guests.
He had five hard-worked private secretaries, clerical and lay: the
Prieur des Roches, Charpentier, Chéré, Mulot, Rossignol; his private
physician, M. Citoys, often served him in the same way. Among his State
secretaries and special agents, who directed, as we know, an army of
spies at home and abroad, Père Joseph and his Capuchin clerks held the
first place. “Ezéchiéli,” as the Cardinal called him, had his offices
in the palace, and visited His Eminence by day and by night.
The Bouthilliers, father and son, with M. de Noyers, were among his
most confidential counsellors and fellow-workers; and in more private
fashion Laffemas, head of the Paris police and known as “le bourreau
du Cardinal,” brought him the evil report of his enemies. In later
years Mazarin became his trusted diplomatic agent and chosen successor.
The Cardinal de la Valette, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Marquis
de Brézé, the Marquis de la Meilleraye--these two being created by
him Marshals of France--may be described as his aides-de-camp; and
beyond all these buzzed a crowd of political pamphleteers and other
writers in the Cardinal’s pay; conspicuous among them Renaudot--founder
under him of the _Gazette de France_, the first approach to a modern
newspaper--Corneille the poet, and various members of the young Academy.
The Cardinal was fond of music, and his band of twelve instruments
attended him everywhere. But what really made his train “august and
majestic,” says Aubery, was the strong force of guards always present
for his defence. The King had added two hundred musketeers and a
company of gendarmes to the hundred horse originally granted him, and
these troops were quartered in and around his palace, being on duty by
turns, as if attending on Royalty.
The officers of the guard were not always lucky enough to please His
Eminence. This is a characteristic story:
“He had said one day to Saint-Georges, his captain of the guard, that
he wished to walk after dinner in his gallery at the Palais-Cardinal
and would see no one there; nevertheless, entering with M. de Noyers,
he found two Capuchins. After giving them a favourable audience, and
finishing his business with M. de Noyers, he scolded his captain of the
guard for disobeying his orders, and treated him to hard words, telling
him plainly that he would be obeyed, and that if he ever committed such
a fault again, he would not come off so cheaply.
“The gentleman, furious at such disgrace, and believing that he could
not remain in the service with honour, took leave to retire, without
farewell, to some inn in the Rue St. Honoré. So that M. le Cardinal,
seeing him no more, asked for news of him; and learning what had
happened, begged the Commander de la Porte to go and find him and bring
him back. But the Commander failing to do so, His Eminence charged M.
de la Meilleraye to go in his turn, and to bring him back by any means
in his power. Which at last he did, after trouble enough in persuading
him. So that His Eminence, seeing him enter the room, went five or
six steps to meet him, and embracing him with much kindness, said:
‘Saint-Georges, we were both very hasty; but if you are like me, you
will never think of it again. God forbid that my hastiness should ruin
the fortunes of a gentleman such as you: on the contrary, I will do you
all the good I can.’”
After which one does not wonder that the Cardinal’s own people liked
him.
His constant ill-health, with the weight of State affairs, made
a regular life necessary to him. He went to bed at eleven, but
after three or four hours of restless sleep he was generally to be
found sitting up in his room, his worn face bent over portfolio or
writing-table, his thin hand and active brain guiding the politics
of Europe. Thus he would work from candlelight to dawn, writing and
dictating, till fatigue obliged him to lie down and sleep again. But
he was up before eight and working with his secretaries; then, when
dressed, he received the King’s other Ministers; then heard mass,
which he celebrated himself on great festivals; and then, before the
mid-day dinner, gave audience in the garden to any one who wished to
see him. After dinner he talked with his friends and guests till it
was necessary to visit the King, to receive ambassadors and great men,
to attend in public to important affairs of State. It was not till
evening that he allowed himself any real quiet and recreation. Then we
may see him strolling again in the garden, playing with his favourite
cats, listening to music, laughing with the few familiars, such as the
lively Abbé de Boisrobert, whose privilege it was to amuse him; and so,
with private prayers that lasted half an hour, ended his days at the
Palais-Cardinal.
He was always, of course, unpopular at Court and in society; not only
because he was feared and mistrusted, but owing to an air of pedantry
and affectation which was unpleasing to everybody and especially so
to women; yet he particularly liked to make himself agreeable to
them. When all the fables of his love-affairs are cleared away, this
characteristic trait remains. He despised women, but he was ready
to bid pretty high, sometimes, for their confidence and admiration.
Several times, for instance, Madame de Chevreuse escaped with the
punishment of temporary exile for plots and treasons which would have
cost a man his head. The Cardinal would have been glad to stand high in
her favour, as well as in that of her royal mistress. As their hatred
grew with years, so did his hardness and severity, till the Duchess,
leaving Queen Anne in danger and disgrace, fled finally to Spain.
His niece, with whom he was on the most intimate, affectionate
terms, seems to have been the only woman who really cared for
Cardinal de Richelieu. For her he planned various great marriages
in France and Lorraine, all of which came to nothing. He gave her
the Petit-Luxembourg when he moved to his new palace, but she still
overlooked his housekeeping and was the leading figure in his
entertainments. Society realized her power, and treated her with
considerable reverence, though it laughed behind her back and told many
malicious stories. As a fact, Madame de Combalet--created Duchesse
d’Aiguillon in 1638--filled a difficult position well; strengthening it
by friendships with distinguished women such as the Princesse de Condé
and Mademoiselle d’Angennes, the famous Julie of the poets, the star of
her mother’s salon at the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
The Marquis de Rambouillet has been already mentioned as a steady
friend of Cardinal de Richelieu, and though His Eminence was not
to be seen at Madame de Rambouillet’s assemblies--the centre of
civilising influence long before his noonday of power--he took a
keen and partly sympathetic interest in all that went on there. His
brilliant intelligence could not fail to recognise the great work
done for society by “the divine Arthénice” in her blue drawing-room,
where savage manners were softened and refined, military roughness was
smoothed, coarse gossip discouraged; some touch of culture and literary
taste being made a passport to the hostess’s favour. It seems certain
that political intrigue found no place at the Hôtel de Rambouillet;
but it is characteristic of Richelieu’s nervous, suspicious mind that
he was not convinced of this. The long flirtation carried on by his
friend the Cardinal de la Valette with the Princesse de Condé, both
of them constant guests there, caused him some anxiety, and the story
goes that he sent Père Joseph to Madame de Rambouillet with promises
of advancement for her husband if she would keep him informed of the
“intrigues” of these two. The Marquise replied: “I do not believe,
Father, that Madame la Princesse and M. le Cardinal de la Valette have
any intrigues; but if they have, I should not be the person to act
as a spy!” It seems that Cardinal de la Valette, who was clever and
witty, did indulge in the dangerous pleasure of laughing at Richelieu’s
pedantries, and with Madame de Rambouillet herself, “in whom he had
entire confidence,” and who enjoyed the joke.
Richelieu’s keenness of intellect and political intuition were not
matched by the delicate wit and lightness of touch that are usually a
Frenchman’s birthright. He was rather fond of making jokes, but they
were often heavy, if not grim, and better calculated to amuse himself
than his hearers. Mademoiselle de Gournay had experience of this.
She was a clever literary woman in a time when such women were rare.
Montaigne adopted her as a daughter, and by his wish she published
an edition of his works after his death, with a preface of her own.
This was in 1595. At the height of Richelieu’s fame she was an old and
eccentric woman, living in Paris, known as the author of _L’Ombre_,
a poetical work full of ancient and far-fetched words and high-flown
sentiments. The fashionable young poets and literary men of Paris found
pleasure in teasing and ridiculing Mademoiselle de Gournay.
In 1635 she edited a new edition of Montaigne, which she dedicated
to Cardinal de Richelieu. She was invited to an audience at the
Palais-Cardinal. Richelieu paid her the necessary compliments, but
in obsolete words which he had carefully chosen out of _L’Ombre_.
He was highly pleased with himself, and his attendants were choking
with laughter. But Mademoiselle de Gournay was an aristocrat. Not for
nothing was she _bien demoiselle_, as Tallemant says. “Elle avoit vu le
beau monde.”
“‘You are laughing at the poor old woman,’ she said. ‘Laugh, great
genius, laugh: it is right that every one should contribute to your
diversion.’”
The Eminentissime was ashamed of himself, and asked her pardon.
Afterwards he pensioned her handsomely, and not only her, but her
old servant Mademoiselle Jamyn and her favourite cat Piaillon, not
forgetting Piaillon’s kittens. The Abbé de Boisrobert, Mademoiselle de
Gournay’s good friend, brought these claims irresistibly before a lover
of cats.
At the height of favour as jester, verse-maker and confidential gossip,
Boisrobert was a fount of honours and pensions at the Palais-Cardinal.
Poor poets and other literary men were the special objects of his care.
He was a clever busybody who went everywhere and knew every one of
the scribblers in verse and prose, social, political, theological,
classical, dramatic, or of more trifling kind, who had drifted up
mostly from the provinces into Parisian garrets and hung about the
hôtels of the great, depending on patronage for their daily bread.
It was among these scattered units of varied birth and talent, all
belonging to “the republic of letters,” that the French Academy began
to exist, and Boisrobert has the right to be called one of its founders.
His character of favourite and of universal patron, as well as his
literary skill, admitted him to weekly meetings of a few chosen
spirits in the Marais, at the house of Valentin Conrart, _bourgeois_,
Protestant, and man of letters. Boisrobert’s position at the
Palais-Cardinal made it natural that he should carry the report of
these meetings direct to Richelieu. The Minister was not altogether
pleased. He disliked private assemblies; too often, in his experience,
they meant conspiracy, and he would gladly have made them illegal.
The arguments of Boisrobert, if they did not quite reassure the
Cardinal, suggested to him a means of utilising these literary meetings
to the advantage of the State and of the French language. He proposed
to Conrart and his friends, through Boisrobert, that they should
become a public body with letters-patent, bound by its own statutes
and holding its assemblies under royal authority, with the object of
purifying and regularising the language and literature of France. The
men of letters struggled a little, for liberty was sweet. But they soon
submitted, and the Forty Immortals took their place among those French
institutions which have survived the old world in which they were born.
As long as Richelieu lived the Academy worked under his presiding
authority. He encouraged no frivolity, no discussion of trifles, but
insisted on hard, steady work. The great Dictionary, first planned
by the poet Chapelain, was seriously begun in 1634 and carried on by
the most methodical among the new academicians, some of whom were
considerably laughed at by the free literary world outside. They were,
in fact, slaves to a Minister who, besides having an unfounded faith in
his own taste, was a critic swayed by reasons extra-literary: one need
hardly mention that the Academy, under Richelieu, snubbed Corneille
and condemned _Le Cid_, too Spanish and too independent to please His
Eminence.
The slavery was profitable: places and pensions made life liveable
for the wiser academicians of Richelieu’s day--whose survivors were
described by La Bruyère as “vieux corbeaux,” croaking as their master
had taught them. And they grew to love their chains, while pouring
flattery at the great man’s feet. Guillaume Colletet, more drunkard
than poet, composed a _rondeau_ which was presented by Boisrobert to
the Cardinal:
“Au grand Armand je vous invite à boire!
Trinquer pour lui, c’est œuvre méritoire.
C’est le support du Parnasse françois;
C’est l’Appollon qui verse quelquefois
Ses rayons d’or jusque dans nostre armoire.
Si sa vertu veut qu’on chante sa gloire,
Sa santé veut qu’on en fasse mémoire
Et que l’on crie, à table, à haute voix:
Au grand Armand!
N’y boire pas, c’est avoir l’âme noire.
Donc, pour blanchir la nostre comme yvoire,
Roys des esprits, beuvez comme des Roys!
Bacchus viendra couronner vos exploits
Et Boisrobert en contera l’histoire
Au grand Armand!”
It is to the honour of Pierre Corneille that he did not, till many
years later, find a place among these “roys des esprits.” The Cardinal
had been disappointed in him. Before the Academy existed he was one
of five poetical secretaries who were employed by His Eminence to
arrange his own original ideas in poetry and drama. The other four were
Boisrobert, l’Estoile, Colletet, and Rotrou. It seems that Corneille
was too honest for his place; his criticism too frank and his opinion
too positive. He was soon dismissed, the Cardinal finding that he
lacked “esprit de suite”; which may be translated as the gift of
following blindly wherever his patron chose to lead.
Richelieu had a passion for plays and ballets, and employed a troup of
actors of his own. They were the third company in Paris, the others
belonging to the Théâtre des Marais and the Hôtel de Bourgogne. There
were two theatres at the Palais-Cardinal, and the smaller was generally
used for the comedies, dances, and other entertainments constantly
attended by their Majesties and the Court. Here were performed pieces
arranged by the Cardinal’s own authors: _Les Tuileries_ and _L’Aveugle
de Smyrne_, dull comedies magnificently staged; livelier pieces such
as _Clorise_, by Baro, a very popular play-writer; other fashionable
plays; ballets in which young Royalties danced--Mademoiselle, Gaston’s
daughter, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Longueville,
Mademoiselle de Vendôme, the Duc d’Enghien; his future wife
Mademoiselle de Maillé-Brézé, and other nieces and cousins of the
Cardinal. These gay fantastic ballets, even more than regular plays,
were the delight of society, young and old. All the courtiers and great
ladies joined in them; Louis XIII. himself often composed both the
words and the music of lutes, spinets, violins, and forgot his gloomy
stiffness in dancing.
In the intervals of the performances the Cardinal’s guests enjoyed rare
fruits and dainty sweetmeats, handed round by his pages in baskets
tied with English ribbons of gold and silver tissue. When comedy and
dance were over the company was offered a gorgeous supper on the great
service of plate which the Cardinal left to the King.
The entertainments at the Palais-Cardinal reached their zenith in
January 1641, with the representation of _Mirame_. Richelieu, to quote
a contemporary, “témoigna des tendresses de père pour cette pièce”; and
it seems actually to have been in great part his work, in collaboration
with the academician Desmarets. The larger of his two theatres, holding
three thousand persons, was used for the first time and decorated with
special magnificence. It was rather a vast saloon than a theatre, with
gilded galleries for the most distinguished guests; the ordinary
admiring crowd finding place on the floor. His Eminence, happy and
triumphant, was near the Queen: the Abbé de Marolles, once a timid
student, now a critical spectator, describes him as dressed in a long
mantle of flame-coloured taffeta over a black soutane, with collar and
facings of ermine.
The scenery of the play, with the new machinery which astonished
all eyes, had been ordered from Italy by Cardinal Mazarin, now a
familiar figure in Paris and Richelieu’s right hand. There was a long
perspective of palaces and gardens, with terraces, grottos, fountains,
statues, all looking out over the sea, “with agitations,” says the
_Gazette_, “which seemed natural to the waves of that vast element,
and two large fleets, one appearing two leagues distant, both of which
passed in sight of the spectators.”
Over this lovely scene night gradually fell, and all was lit up by the
moon. Then, just as naturally, day dawned and the sun rose, taking his
turn in this “agréable tromperie.”
The majority of the guests were amazed and transported beyond
measure. A few critics, among whom was the Abbé de Marolles, did not
particularly care for all this “fine machinery and grand perspective.”
He found it fatiguing to the eyes and the mind: in his opinion a comedy
should depend for success on story, poetry, and fine acting. “Le reste
n’est qu’un embarras inutile.”
There were other more malicious critics who saw in the story of the
play--the love of Princess Mirame, daughter of the King of Bithynia,
for the daring sailor Arimant, commanding the fleet of Colchos, with
all the tragical events which at last brought about a happy ending--a
veiled allusion to the old romance of Queen Anne and the Duke of
Buckingham. It is very improbable, to say the least, that Richelieu,
who had at this time ceased to persecute the Queen, should choose to
offend her afresh by stirring up grievances fifteen years old. His
object, never indeed attained, was to live at peace among princes
and nobles who had learnt their lesson. What really annoyed him in
connection with this performance of _Mirame_ was the discovery by his
watchful enemies of various disreputable persons among the invited
guests. The King was displeased; Monsieur enjoyed the incident; and the
Cardinal could only revenge himself on an unlucky official who had been
too free with his cards of admittance.
In spite of fault-finders _Mirame_ was a triumph. Standing up in his
place, the Cardinal joyfully acknowledged the constant thunders of
applause, then waving his hand for silence, that none of his fine lines
might be missed. When the play was over, and the Queen had passed on
a golden bridge drawn by peacocks to a silver throne prepared for her
beyond the lifted curtain of the stage, to preside over a grand ball
that ended the evening, there was no prouder man in Europe than her
host--the weary, sickly statesman who had already given provinces to
France and made her paramount in Italy and Spain.