reator, so to speak, could not fail to inspire them with respect,
veneration, and even attachment. Louis XIV., who knew the defects of M.
de Barbezieux, complained to him, and sometimes rated him in private, but
he left him his place, because he felt the importance of preserving in
the administration of war the spirit and the principles of Louvois.
"Take him for all in all," says St. Simon, "he had the making of a great
minister in him, but wonderfully dangerous; the best and most useful
friend in the world so long as he was one, and the most terrible, the
most inveterate, the most implacable and naturally ferocious enemy; he
was a man who would not brook opposition in anything, and whose audacity
was extreme." A worthy son of Louvois, as devoted to pleasure as he
was zealous in business, he was carried off in five days, at the age of
thirty-three. The king, who had just put Chamillard into the place of
Pontchartrain, made chancellor at the death of Boucherat, gave him the
war department in succession to Barbezieux, "thus loading such weak
shoulders with two burdens of which either was sufficient to break down
the strongest."

Louis XIV. had been faithfully and mightily served by Colbert and
Louvois; he had felt confidence in them, though he had never had any
liking for them personally; their striking merits, the independence of
their character, which peeped out in spite of affected expressions of
submission and deference, the spirited opposition of the one and the
passionate outbursts of the other, often hurt the master's pride, and
always made him uncomfortable; Colbert had preceded him in the
government, and Louvois, whom he believed himself to have trained, had
surpassed him in knowledge of affairs as well as aptitude for work;
Chamillard was the first, the only one of his ministers whom the king had
ever loved. "His capacity was nil," says St. Simon, who had very
friendly feelings towards Chamillard, "and he believed that he knew
everything and of every sort; this was the more pitiable in that it had
got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than
stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is,
that the mainspring of the king's great affection for him was this very
incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was
delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous
for his success as if it were his own, and made every excuse fo