Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/105

Rh by pretending to be on the point of going to enjoy the privileges and honors of the cardinalate at Rome, in the bosom of his family and the home of the arts.

Lastly, there is a delicate point which La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches, but which history cannot leave in the shade without ignoring the cause which first gave power to Mazarin, and soon became the knot and the key of his position—Anne of Austria was a woman, and Mazarin did not displease her. To quote our own words in another work, "After having been so long oppressed, the royal authority delighted Anne of Austria, and her Spanish soul craved respect and homage. Mazarin lavished them upon her. He threw himself at her feet in order to reach her heart. In her heart she was scarcely affected by the grave accusation which was already raised against him—that he was a foreigner—for she was also a foreigner; perhaps, indeed, this was a secret attraction to her, and she found a peculiar charm in conversing with her prime minister in her mother-tongue as with a fellow-countryman and a friend. Add to all this the mind and the manners of Mazarin; he was pliant and insinuating; always master of himself, of an immovable serenity in the gravest emergencies, full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing his confidence everywhere about him. It must also be said that—cardinal as he was—Mazarin was not a priest; that, nourished in the maxims of the gallantry of her country, Anne of Austria had always loved to please; that she was forty-one years of age and was still beautiful; that her minister was of the same age, and that he was well-made, with a pleasing face, in which refinement was joined with dignity. He had quickly perceived that without family, without establishment, and without support in France, surrounded by rivals and by enemies, all his power was in the