avor; he felt his position towards the king
shaken by the influence of Madame de Maintenon; venting his wrath on the
enemy, he was giving orders everywhere for conflagration and bombardment,
when on the 17th of July, 1691, after working with the king, Louvois
complained of pain; Louis XIV. sent him to his rooms; on reaching his
chamber he fell down fainting; the people ran to fetch his third son, M.
de Barbezieux; Madame do Louvois was not at Versailles, and his two elder
sons were in the field; he arrived too late; his father was dead.

"So he is dead, this great minister, this man of such importance, whose
egotism (_le moi_), as M. Nicole says, was so extensive, who was the
centre of so many things! What business, what designs, what projects,
what secrets, what interests to unfold, what wars begun, what intrigues,
what beautiful moves-in-check to make and to superintend! Ah! my God,
grant me a little while; I would fain give check to the Duke of Savoy and
mate to the Prince of Orange! No, no, thou shalt not have one, one
single moment!" Thus wrote Madame do Sevigne to her daughter Madame de
Grignan. Louis XIV., in whose service Louvois had spent his life, was
less troubled at his death. "Tell the King of England that I have lost a
good minister," was the answer he sent to the complimentary condolence of
King James, "but that his affairs and mine will go on none the worse."

In his secret heart, and beneath the veil of his majestic observance of
the proprieties, the king thought that his business, as well as the
agreeableness of his life, would probably gain from being no longer
subject to the tempers and the roughnesses of Louvois. The Grand
Monarque considered that he had trained (_instruit_) his minister, but he
felt that the pupil had got away from him. He appointed Barbezieux
secretary for war. "I will form you," said he. No human hand had formed
Louvois, not even that of his father, the able and prudent Michael le
Tellier; he had received straight from God the strong qualities,
resolution, indomitable will, ardor for work, the instinct of
organization and command, which had made of him a minister without equal
for the warlike and ambitious purposes of his master. Power had spoiled
him, his faults had prevailed over his other qualities without destroying
them; violent, fierce, without principle and without scruple in the
execution of his designs, he had egged the king on to incessant wars,
treating with