statesman to
the tomb; having entrusted the Regency, very much against his will, to
the Queen, but controlled by a Council, over which presided as Prime
Minister the man most devoted to Richelieu's system--his closest friend,
confidant, and creature--Jules Mazarin.

A passage in the funeral oration on Louis XIII. summed up briefly but
significantly the result of Richelieu's gigantic efforts to consolidate
the regal power. "Sixty-three kings," it said, "had preceded him in rule
of the realm, but he alone had rendered it absolute, and what all
collectively had been impotent to achieve in the course of twelve
centuries for the grandeur of France, he had accomplished in the short
space of thirty-three years." It was against that absolute power
incarnate in Richelieu, which from the steps of the throne hurled men to
the earth with its bolts rather than governed them, that Mazarin was
destined later to encounter the reaction of the Fronde.

Distrustful of leaving Anne of Austria in uncontrolled possession of
regal authority, Louis by his last will and testament had placed
royalty, including his brother Gaston as lieutenant-general of the
realm, in a manner under a commission. And further, Louis did not
believe that he could ensure quiet to the State after his death without
confirming and perpetuating, so far as in him lay, the perpetual exile
of Madame de Chevreuse.

As the pupil and confidential friend of Richelieu, Mazarin had imbibed
both that statesman's and the late king's opinions and sentiments
touching the influence of that eminently dangerous woman. Though he had
never seen her hitherto, he was not the less well acquainted with her by
repute: dreading her mortally, and cherishing a like antipathy to her
friend Chateauneuf. He knew the Duchess to be as seductive as she was
talented, experienced and courageous in party strife--an instance of
which was that she could sway entirely a man of such ambition and
capacity as the former Keeper of the Seals. Attached, moreover, in
secret to Lorraine, to Austria, and to Spain, all this was as absolutely
incompatible with the exclusive favour to which he aspired at the hands
of his royal mistress as it was with all his diplomatic and military
designs. The solemn injunctions of the late king's will, while
denouncing Madame de Chevreuse and Chateauneuf as the two most
illustrious victims of the close of his reign, embodied also the heads
of the policy which it was that monarch'