Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/281

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

LOUIS XIV. 193 Austria, and that she made a bitter enemy of the minister by repelling his cour- tesies. Be this as it may, they were never friends, except so far as the relations of state compelled them to be such. He died in 1642, naming Cardinal Maza- rin as his successor. Before his death he had built up the power of France, and won for her an influential position among the governments of Europe. But he had repressed constitutional liberty, and severely burdened the people with taxa- tion to carry on the wars he advocated. Two years after the birth of the Dauphin, as the heir to the throne was then called, another son was born to the king, the Duke of Anjou, who afterward be- came the Duke of Orleans. The brother of the king is called " Monsieur " in France, by courtesy ; and he is so designated in various works of the time. Louis XIII. died when his two sons were respectively five and three years old, naming the queen as regent during the minority of the young king. Richelieu had died the year before, and Mazarin had been installed in his place. The Palais-Royal, which claims the attention of every visitor in Paris at the present time, was built by Richelieu for his own residence, and was called the Palais-Cardinal. At his death he bequeathed it to the king, and it became the residence of Anne of Austria and her two children. The official in charge of the palaces represented that it was not proper for the king to live in the man- sion of a subject, and the inscription bearing the former name was removed, and that of the present day was substituted for it ; which seemed to many to be an act of ingratitude to the statesman who had presented it to the crown. The chamber which had been occupied by Richelieu was given to Louis, then only five years old. It was a small apartment, for the cardinal built more for effect upon the world than for his own personal comfort ; but it was conveniently located for the proper care of the young king, for whose sake alone the name of the palace had been changed. The Palais-Royal, as enlarged and beautified from time to time by its first occupant, who was ambitious to be more magnificently lodged than the nominal sovereign at the Louvre, was the most splendid royal residence of the time. Corneille, the greatest tragic poet of France, said of it in one of his poems, that "the entire universe cannot present the equal of the magnificent exterior of the Palais-Cardinal ; " though, as the stranger looks upon it to-day, the praise of the French Shakespeare seems to be extravagant. The apartments of the queen-regent were vastly more extensive and elegant than those of his little majesty, and she caused a great deal of money and good taste to be expended in their further ornamentation. Cardinal Mazarin also went to reside with the royal family in this luxurious palace, and his rooms looked out upon the Rue des Bons Enfants (the street of the Good Children), though the name was hardly applicable to those who dwelt in the place. Louis was provided with the surroundings of royalty on a small scale, such as valets, and young nobles as children of honor, even while the young king was pinched in his personal comforts and luxuries. Until he was seven years old Louis was mostly in the hands of the feminine portion of the household, like other children. 13