duties he was utterly incompetent. With good
intentions, a love of justice, and a deep sense of religion, he was
vacillating and indolent; and cared little either to assert his
privileges, or to take upon himself the cares and fatigues of government
while he could transfer them to others, and thus secure time to abandon
himself to more congenial pursuits.

In this circumstance were comprised all the errors of his reign; as even
while deeply imbued with a sense of his dignity as the sovereign of a
great nation, he exhibited the feeling only in acts of petty and
obstinate opposition which tended to no result, and were productive only
of a want of attachment to his person, and of respect for his opinions,
which increased the arrogance of the great nobles, and fostered the
ambition of his ministers.

It is now time that we should introduce an individual whose subsequent
importance in the kingdom, humble as were his antecedents, was one
source of the bitter trials to which the unfortunate Marie de Medicis
was subjected during a long period of her life. The Comte de Lude had in
his service a page, who was subsequently transferred to that of the
young King; and it is the history of this apparently insignificant
person which we are now called upon to detail to the reader. Albert de
Luynes, his father, was the son of Guillaume Segur, a canon of the
cathedral of Marseilles, and of the housekeeper of the said
ecclesiastic; and derived the name of Luynes from a small tenement upon
the bank of that river, between Aix and Marseilles, which was the
property of the canon, who preferred that his son should adopt the
appellation of his farm rather than his own. There was, however, an
elder brother, on whom the little property belonging to the priest was
exclusively bestowed, and Luynes accordingly discovered that he must
become the architect of his own fortunes. With all the fearless
confidence of youth he made his way, as he best could, to the capital,
where he enlisted as an archer of the bodyguard, displayed great
aptitude and courage, and finally obtained the governorship of
Pont-St.-Esprit. While thus prospering in the world he married, became
the father of seven children, of whom three were sons; and died without
suspecting that his name would be handed down to posterity through the
medium of one of these almost portionless boys, whose sole inheritance
was a small dairy-farm of the annual value of twelve hundred livres.

Charles