Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/162

148 all risks to clear up his position and to force the queen to declare herself openly. The moment was a decisive one. If the danger which he had just shunned and which was even now suspended over his head was not sufficient to draw the queen from her indecision, it was because she had no love for him; and Mazarin well knew that in the midst of the dangers that surrounded him, his whole power lay in the affections of the queen, and that on her depended both his present and his future safety. Thus, either through policy or through sincere passion, he always addressed himself to the heart of Anne of Austria, and he soliloquized thus at the outset of the contest: "If I thought the queen only made use of me through necessity, without having any personal regard for me, I would not stay here three days." But, as we have sufficiently proved, Anne of Austria loved Mazarin. Every day, on comparing him with his rivals, she appreciated him the more. She admired the precision and clearness of his intellect, his subtlety and his penetration, the capacity for labor which enabled him to bear the weight of the government with almost superhuman ease, his keen perception, his consummate prudence, and, at the same time, the judicious energy of his resolutions. She saw the affairs of France everywhere prospering in his firm and able hands. The cardinal had had no share, it is true, in the great battle which had just inaugurated the new reign with so much eclat; but he had had much to do with the success which followed it and which proved to astonished Europe that the day of Rocroy was not merely a happy accident. When every one in the council was opposed to the siege of Thionville, when M. the Prince himself was averse to it, when Turenne, being consulted, dared not declare himself in its favor, it was Mazarin who had insisted with more than usual vehemence