198 STATESMEN AND SAGES treaty stipulated the marriage of Louis XIV. and Marie Therese, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, and they were married a year later. This princess was good- natured and beautiful, but this was about all that could be said of her, for she was rather weak in intellect, and was not such a queen as " Louis the Great " needed. His majesty was not attached to her, though he invariably treated her with the most ceremonious respect, and extended to her the utmost kindness and consideration. Though the king had a certain respect for the proprieties of his position, he lived in a period of the greatest immorality and license, while he attended strictly to his formal religious duties. Judged by any standard of the morals of more modern times, the verdict of average citizens would be against him. He was surrounded by dissolute men, and some, who ought to have protected him from the assaults of vice, placed him in its way. He was no worse in this respect than even Riche- lieu and Mazarin, not to mention his mother and many of the most noted men of his time. This is not the place to detail the king's gallantries, for they would fill a volume. When Louis was twenty-three years of age, Cardinal Mazarin died, having ruled the nation for eighteen years ; but ten of them were after the king had come to his majority, and the minister had discovered that he had a will of his own, in- competent as he then was to hold the reins of government. Louis went to see him in his final hours, and asked him for his last counsels. " Sire," replied the dying cardinal, " see that you respect yourself, and others will respect you ; never have another first minister ; employ Colbert in all things in which you need the services of an intelligent and devoted man." And the king followed this advice, and perhaps Mazarin gave it because he understood so well the inclination of Louis. Mazarin died possessed of an immense fortune, which was not generally be- lieved to have been honestly acquired. He was a usurer, though he could be very liberal when his policy demanded. On his death-bed his confessor warned him that he was eternally lost if he did not restore whatever wealth he had fraudu- lently accumulated ; but the dying cardinal declared that he had nothing which had not been bestowed upon him by the bounty of the king. His fortune was estimated at fifty millions of francs, or about ten millions of dollars, a vast sum for that time. He gave the bulk of it to his nieces and nephews, with presents to members of the royal family, and eighteen large diamonds to the crown, called " the Mazarins." Like Richelieu, he had built a palace on the Seine, which he gave to the State, and the Palais Mazarin is now occupied by the French Academy. This act and the creation of a dukedom were to perpetuate his name. He was the owner of one of the original twenty-five Bibles printed by Gutenberg, which is called by Mazarin's name, and was once sold for about twenty thousand dollars. After the death of the great minister, officials of the government desired to know to whom they were to apply for instructions, and the king promptly re- plied that they were to address themselves to him. Louis had hitherto devoted
