years of age, declaring that
he was qualified to reign.

Only once again was this body to be called together. That was in 1789,
by Louis XVI., when it was transformed into a National Assembly.

But when it was discovered that the power of the detested pair was as
great behind the boy king as it had been behind his mother, the storm
gathered again from all parts of the kingdom. It was France in
struggle with Concini, the man who was audaciously sending princes of
the blood and dukes to the Bastille.

But a counter-influence was weaving about Louis. He was made to
realize the indignity to himself in letting two vulgar Italians usurp
his authority. Thus Albert de Luynes, his adored friend, procured his
signature to a paper ordering the immediate destruction of Concini and
his wife. And when Louis had seen Concini despatched by his own agents
in the court of the Louvre, and the arrest, trial, and execution of
Eleonora (upon the charge of sorcery), he completed the work by
banishing his mother, only to fall immediately into the power of Albert
de Luynes, himself an intriguing parasite, who intended to play the
very same role as the pair he had overthrown.

The clever Eleonora, when arraigned on the charge of sorcery, replied,
"The only magic I have used is that of a strong mind over a weak one."
Albert de Luynes's head was never carried about Paris on a pike, as was
hers. But he experimented with the same kind of magic.

This wretched period after the death of the great Henry had occupied
twelve years. But in 1622 Cardinal Richelieu took his seat among the
advisers of the king. The true man had been found. King, nobles,
people of all ranks and religions, realized that a master had appeared
in the land; a master inscrutable in his purposes, and clothed with a
mysterious power.

The foundations of this man's policy lay deep, out of sight of all save
his own far-reaching intelligence. Pitiless as an iceberg, he crushed
every obstacle to his purpose. Impartial as fate, with no loves, no
hatreds, catholics, protestants, nobles, parliaments, one after another
were borne down before his determination to make the king, what he had
not been since Charlemagne, supreme in France.

The will of the great minister mowed down like a scythe. The power of
the grandees, that last remnant of feudalism, and a perpetual menace to
monarchy, was swept away. One great noble after another was humiliated
and shorn of his privile