brilliant with gems, and so conspicuously enthroned as to be
visible to every eye, she presented an aspect of almost celestial
loveliness.

The young king rode by her side, magnificently mounted. His garments
of velvet, richly embroidered with gold and jewels, had been prepared
for the occasion at an expense of considerably more than a million of
dollars. The splendors of this gala-day were never forgotten by those
who witnessed them.

For succeeding weeks and months the court luxuriated in one continued
round of gayety and extravagance. Night after night the magnificent
saloons of the Louvre and the Tuileries resounded with music, while
proud lords and high-born dames trod the floors in the mazy dance, and
inflamed their passions with the most costly wines. It can not be
denied that a man who is trained from infancy amidst such scenes could
acquire elegance of manner which those engrossed in the useful and
ennobling employments of life rarely attain. Neither can it be denied
that this is as poor a school as can possibly be imagined to prepare
one wisely to administer the affairs of a nation of twenty millions of
people. In fact, Louis XIV. never dreamed of consulting the interests
of the people. It was his sole object to aggrandize himself by
promoting the splendor, the power, and the glory of the monarchy.

One does well to be angry when he reflects that, to maintain this
reckless and utterly useless extravagance of the king and the court,
the millions of the peasantry of France were compelled to live in mud
hovels, to wear the coarsest garb, to eat the plainest food, while
their wives and their daughters toiled barefooted in the fields. One
would think that guilty consciences would often be appalled by the
announcement, "Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee
into judgment?"

Though this revolting state of society was the slow growth of time,
and though no one there could have regarded this aristocratic
oppression as it is now estimated in the clearer light of the present
day, still these outrages, inflicted by the strong upon the weak, by
the rich upon the poor, merit the unmitigated condemnation of men, as
they have ever incurred the denunciations of God.

Cardinal Mazarin, more than any other man in France, was accountable
for the enormous luxury of the court, and the squalid misery of the
people. He knew better. He was professedly a disciple of Jesus Christ,
and yet a more thorough worldlin