144 HISTOR Y OF FRANCE. [chap. nothing but a court of law, and even the cities were deprived of their municipal rights by the appointment of intendants, or stewards of the king, and by the sale of mayoralties for life. A great standing army was kept up, at once employing the nobles and overawing the people. In 1667 a lieutenant of police was appointed, who regulated the watch, firemen, postal arrangements, and the like, and was at the same time an instrument of despotism. Lettres de cachet, or sealed letters, had always been in use as means by which the king suspended forms of justice, and kept persons in prison without trial. These letters were employed whenever any one dared to question a measure of any officer of the government. They were even obtained as matters of family disciphne ; a father whose son displeased him could procure one of these letters, and keep him in prison as long as he chose. It was at this time that the Bastille, the great fortress of Paris, became the terror of France. Still, with his mag- nificent manners and brilliant court, the king kept the whole country in such a state of rapt admiration that no one had the smallest doubt that the whole world was meant to conduce to the glory of Lewis the Great. Nobody murmured at the enormous sums he was laying out on his palace, gardens, and fountains at Versailles, which made peace as costly as war. 18. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 16S5. — In 1683 Colbert died, and from that time Lewis's success began to wane. His queen died the same year, leaving him only one son, a dull, heavy man, in whom Bossuet had never been able to rouse a taste for anything but trifling. But Lewis had already come under a new influence. Frances d'Aiibigiu', the daughter of a scapegrace son of one of the most distinguished Huguenots, had been adopted by a Catholic aunt and bred up in her Church. She had been married at sixteen, out of pity, by a good-humoured and deformed old poet, named Scarron, and after his death she was recommended as governess to the king's natural children. She gained an influence over Lewis which never failed for the rest of his life. Under this influence Lewis made a great profession of religion, and he seems really to have improved his private life. She never bore any title higher than that of Marchioness of Mai/ttenon, taken from an estate which she purchased ; but after the queen's death Lewis married her in private, a fact which was known to ever>- one at Court, though never acknow-
