It was the end of the Fronde, and of the
attempt of the Parlement of Paris, a venal body[139] devoid of
representative basis, to imitate the functions of the English House of
Commons. The crown emerged from the contest more absolute than before,
and Louis never forgot the days when he was a fugitive with his
mother, and driven to lie on a hard mattress at the palace of St.
Germain. In 1655 the Parlement of Paris met to prepare remonstrances
against a royal edict: the young king heard of it while hunting at
Vincennes, made his way to the hall of St. Louis booted[140] and
spurred, rated the councillors and dissolved the sitting.

[Footnote 139: One of the schemes of Francis I. to raise money had
been to offer the benches to the highest bidders, and under the law of
1604 the office of councillor became a hereditary property on payment
to the court of one-sixtieth of its value. Moreover, the Parlement was
but a local body, one among several others in the provinces.]

[Footnote 140: The added indignity of the whip is an invention of
Voltaire.]

The years following on the internal peace were a period of triumphant
foreign war and diplomacy. Mazarin achieved his purpose of marrying
the Infanta of Spain to his royal master; he added to and confirmed
Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph
over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after a
pathetic scene in his sumptuous palace, where the stricken old
cardinal dragged his tottering steps along its vast galleries, casting
a despairing look on the marvellous treasures of art he had collected
and sorrowing like a child at the idea of separating from them for
ever, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were
not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness and courage. Mazarin
was, however, a costly servant, who bled his adopted country to
satisfy his love for the arts and splendours of life, to furnish
dowries to his nieces, and to exalt his family. His vast palace (now
the Bibliotheque Nationale), with its library of 35,000 volumes,
freely open to scholars, was furnished with princely splendour. He
left 2,000,000 livres to found a college for the gratuitous education
of sixty sons of gentlemen from the four provinces--Spanish, Italian,
German and Flemish--recently added to the crown, in order that French
culture and grace might be diffused among them; they were to be taught
the use of arms, horsemanship, dancing, Christi