dom exercised no influence over
the festivities of the Court; balls, banquets, and comedies took place
in rapid succession; and the young Queen danced in a ballet which was
the admiration of all the spectators; an example which was followed by
the nobles of the royal household.[265] Still, however, it was necessary
to recruit the national treasury; and, accordingly, on the 10th of March
a declaration was published by which the King confiscated all the
property of the disaffected Princes, and made it forfeit to the Crown;
while at the same time three separate bodies of troops attacked the
rebels with complete success, and the royal arms were everywhere
triumphant, when intelligence was forwarded to their leaders from the
capital which induced an immediate cessation of hostilities.[266]

We have seen the effect of the insolence of Concini, and the insidious
inferences of De Luynes, upon the mind of the young King, who had only
six months previously been taught a lesson of dissimulation on the
occasion of the arrest of Conde; and consequently it can scarcely be
subject of surprise that, wounded to the heart's core, he was easily
persuaded to exert in his own cause the subtlety which he had evinced at
the bidding of another. He was now between fifteen and sixteen years of
age, and was deeply imbued by the idea that he possessed an unlimited
control alike over the properties, the liberty, the honour, and the
lives of his subjects; but he was still utterly incapable of fulfilling
his duties as a sovereign. His conceptions of right and wrong were
confused and unstable; and he willingly listened to the advice of those
whose counsels flattered his selfishness and his resentment. De Luynes
had skilfully availed himself of this weakness; and as he was
all-powerful with his suspicious and saturnine master, who saw in every
one by whom he was approached either an enemy to be opposed, or a spy to
be deceived, he was careful to introduce to him none save individuals
whose insignificance rendered them incapable of interfering with his own
interests, and who might be dismissed without comment or danger whenever
he should deem their absence desirable. Against this arrangement neither
the Queen-mother nor her ministers entered any protest. Louis truly was,
as his favourite had so insolently asserted, a mere puppet in their
hands; and the consequence of this undignified neglect was fatal to the
intellectual progress of the young sovereign.