of her, for she was rather weak in intellect, and was
not such a queen as "Louis the Great" needed. His majesty was not
attached to her, though he invariably treated her with the most
ceremonious respect, and extended to her the utmost kindness and
consideration.

Though the king had a certain respect for the proprieties of his
position, he lived in a period of the greatest immorality and license,
while he attended strictly to his formal religious duties. Judged by any
standard of the morals of more modern times, the verdict of average
citizens would be against him. He was surrounded by dissolute men, and
some, who ought to have protected him from the assaults of vice, placed
him in its way. He was no worse in this respect than even Richelieu and
Mazarin, not to mention his mother and many of the most noted men of his
time. This is not the place to detail the king's gallantries, for they
would fill a volume.

When Louis was twenty-three years of age, Cardinal Mazarin died, having
ruled the nation for eighteen years; but ten of them were after the king
had come to his majority, and the minister had discovered that he had a
will of his own, incompetent as he then was to hold the reins of
government. Louis went to see him in his final hours, and asked him for
his last counsels. "Sire," replied the dying cardinal, "see that you
respect yourself, and others will respect you; never have another first
minister; employ Colbert in all things in which you need the services of
an intelligent and devoted man." And the king followed this advice, and
perhaps Mazarin gave it because he understood so well the inclination of
Louis.

Mazarin died possessed of an immense fortune, which was not generally
believed to have been honestly acquired. He was a usurer, though he
could be very liberal when his policy demanded. On his death-bed his
confessor warned him that he was eternally lost if he did not restore
whatever wealth he had fraudulently accumulated; but the dying cardinal
declared that he had nothing which had not been bestowed upon him by the
bounty of the king. His fortune was estimated at fifty millions of
francs, or about ten millions of dollars, a vast sum for that time. He
gave the bulk of it to his nieces and nephews, with presents to members
of the royal family, and eighteen large diamonds to the crown, called
"the Mazarins."

Like Richelieu, he had built a palace on the Seine, which he gave to the
State, and the Palais