Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/770

 taste for music, and brought singers and operas from Italy. Until his time the royal orchestra was limited to violins; he brought into use various other instruments till then unknown in France. Dancing was also greatly cultivated, and the ballet, which assumed such magnificent proportions during Louis the Fourteenth's reign, became a principal entertainment in all the court festivities. In fine, he initiated all the luxury, splendour, and refinement which ultimately degenerated into the sybaritism that distinguished the second half of the seventeenth century.

In the mean time he carefully excluded the young king from all State affairs, inclining him to frivolous and vicious pursuits, keeping from him all good books, and diverting his mind from all studies of an ennobling character, or which would instruct him in the art of government. In consequence of this training, the future Augustus grew up very ill-educated. La Porte, who was the king's personal attendant during his boyhood, has, in addition to this, brought an accusation against the cardinal too terrible to be repeated in these pages, the veracity of which is seemingly confirmed by the fact that, although banished on account of the assertion during Mazarin's lifetime, he was afterwards recalled and taken into favour, which would scarcely have come to pass had his story been false. After all, there must have been something truly great in Louis' nature that it could emerge so well from such a training.

Mazarin had married one niece to the Prince de Conti, and a second to the Duc de Mercœur; two others, Marie and Olympia Mancini, were unmarried; these the cardinal kept at court, and threw constantly into the young monarch's society. Madame de Motteville tells us, when Olympia first arrived in France, she was remarkably plain, but as she grew to womanhood a great improvement took place in her personal appearance. He eyes were always fine, but from being exceedingly thin, she became plump; her colour was high, but delicate; her cheeks were dimpled; her hands and feet small and exceedingly beautiful, and she possessed wit, talents, and grace. Such charms, thrown constantly in his way, could not fail to make some impression upon the heart of a boy of seventeen. They read, sat, talked, danced together, and Louis studied Italian for the express purpose of conversing with her in her own language. But the impression was not lasting; a rival, her own sister, Marie, who has been described as being positively ugly, after a time usurped her place in the king's affections; and took a far firmer hold upon them than Olympia had ever possessed. She reciprocated his tenderness with an all-absorbing passion. Madame de Motteville relates that Mazarin actually entertained the idea of raising his niece to the throne. "I very much fear," he said to the queen one day, "that the king too greatly desires to espouse my niece." The queen, who knew her minister, comprehending that he desired what he feigned to fear, replied haughtily, "If the king were capable of such an indignity, I would put my second son at the head of the whole nation against the king and against you."


 * Mazarin [writes Voltaire] never pardoned, it is said, that response of the queen, but he adopted the wise plan of thinking with her; he assumed honour and merit in opposing the passion of Louis the Fourteenth. His power had no need of a queen of the blood for its support; he feared even the character of his niece; and he believed that he strengthened the power of his ministry by avoiding the dangerous glory of elevating his house to too great a height.

Mazarin now resolved to at once remove Marie from the court; upon his declaring this intention, and forbidding any further intercourse between her and the king, her grief and despair was so heart-rending that Louis offered to break off the marriage then negotiating with the Infanta, and make her his queen. How admirably the wily cardinal could act a noble and self-denying part, is manifest in the reply he made to this offer: "Having been chosen by the late king, your father, and since then by the queen, your mother, to assist you by my councils, and having served you up to this moment with inviolable fidelity, far be it from me to misemploy the knowledge of your weakness, which you have given me, and the authority in your dominions, which you have bestowed upon me, and suffer you to do a thing so contrary to your dignity! I am the master of my niece, and would sooner stab her with my own hand than elevate her by so great a treachery." In two of his letters he threatened the king with resigning his office, and quitting France forever, unless he relinquished all thoughts of his niece. There are historical writers who have held these heroic effusions to be the expression of his real sentiments, and have praised them accordingly; but such a judgment is in direct contradiction of the whole life of the man. He who could systematically