Mazarin is now occupied by the French Academy.
This act and the creation of a dukedom were to perpetuate his name. He
was the owner of one of the original twenty-five Bibles printed by
Gutenberg, which is called by Mazarin's name, and was once sold for
about twenty thousand dollars.

[Illustration: Moliere at breakfast with Louis XIV.]

After the death of the great minister, officials of the government
desired to know to whom they were to apply for instructions, and the
king promptly replied that they were to address themselves to him. Louis
had hitherto devoted himself almost wholly to the pleasures of his
dissolute age, and he astonished his people and the nations of Europe by
assuming in reality the entire control of the affairs of state, which he
retained to the end of his life. He proceeded at once to examine into
the finances of the nation, and appointed Colbert, as Mazarin had
advised, minister of this department. He succeeded Fouquet, a brilliant
man who had amassed enormous wealth by robbing the treasury. Louis was
firm and resolute in carrying out his will, and he caused the arrest of
the peculating minister immediately after a magnificent fete he had
given in honor of his sovereign. He was convicted and sentenced to
imprisonment for life.

Colbert did not disappoint the king, and the measures recommended by him
at once improved the finances, stimulated the commerce of the country,
established extensive manufactures, and filled the treasury. France was
in the highest degree prosperous as a nation. Louis was arbitrary and
absolute. His most notable saying, "_L'etat c'est moi_" (I am the
State), was fully realized in his administration. He made war and made
peace at his own pleasure, and, as monarchs are measured, he was
entitled to the appellation of Louis le Grand, chiselled on the
triumphal arches of Paris to perpetuate his glory. In the later years of
his reign his wars made serious inroads upon the treasury, and they were
not always successful. The building of the immense and extravagant
palace of Versailles, with its surroundings, costing a billion francs,
was an act of folly often condemned, and was one of the burdens which
broke down the treasury of the nation. Colbert was dead, and the king,
with Louvois, his over-liberal minister, dissipated the resources he had
collected.

Marie Therese, the queen, died in 1683. He afterward married Madame de
Maintenon, then the widow of the lame and deformed poe