this unknown?" said Anne of Austria to her
brother. "It will be time when she has passed that door," replied the
king. Young Monsieur, the king's brother, leaned forward towards his
sister-in-law, and, "What does your Majesty think of this door?" he
whispered. "I think it very nice and handsome," answered the young
queen. The king had thought her handsome, "despite the ugliness of her
head-dress and of her clothes, which had at first taken him by surprise."
King Philip IV. kept looking at M. de Turenne, who had accompanied the
king. "That man has given me dreadful times," he repeated twice or
thrice. "You can judge whether M. de Turenne felt himself offended,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier. The definitive marriage took place at
Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the 9th of June, and the court took the road
leisurely back to Vincennes. Scarcely had the arrival taken place, when
all the sovereign bodies sent a solemn deputation to pay their respects
to Cardinal Mazarin and thank him for the peace he had just concluded.
It was an unprecedented honor, paid to a minister upon whose head the
Parliament had but lately set a price. The cardinal's triumph was as
complete at home as abroad; all foes had been reduced to submission or
silence, Paris and France rejoicing over the peace and the king's
marriage; but, like Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin succumbed at the very
pinnacle of his glory and power; the gout, to which he was subject, flew
to his stomach, and he suffered excruciating agonies. One day, when the
king came to get his advice upon a certain matter, "Sir," said the
cardinal, "you are asking counsel of a man who no longer has his reason
and who raves." He saw the approach of death calmly, but not
unregretfully. Concealed, one day, behind a curtain in the new
apartments of the Mazarin Palace (now the National Library), young
Brienne heard the cardinal coming. "He dragged his slippers along like a
man very languid and just recovering from some serious illness. He
paused at every step, for he was very feeble; he fixed his gaze first on
one side and then on the other, and letting his eyes wander over the
magnificent objects of art he had been all his life collecting, he said,
'All that must be left behind!' And, turning round, he added, 'And that
too! What trouble I have had to obtain all these things! I shall never
see them more where I am going.'" He had himself removed to Vincennes,
of which he was governor. There he conti