ize Philip V., but he accepted the status
quo; the crown of Spain remained definitively with the house of Bourbon;
it had cost men and millions enough; for an instant the very foundations
of order in Europe had seemed to be upset; the old French monarchy had
been threatened; it had recovered of itself and by its own resources,
sustaining single-handed the struggle which was pulling down all Europe
in coalition against it; it had obtained conditions which restored its
frontiers to the limits of the peace of Ryswick; but it was exhausted,
gasping, at wits' end for men and money; absolute power had obtained from
national pride the last possible efforts, but it had played itself out in
the struggle; the confidence of the country was shaken; it had been seen
what dangers the will of a single man had made the nation incur; the
tempest was already gathering within men's souls. The habit of respect,
the memory of past glories, the personal majesty of Louis XIV. still kept
up about the aged king the deceitful appearances of uncontested power and
sovereign authority; the long decadence of his great-grandson's reign was
destined to complete its ruin.

"I loved war too much," was Louis XIV.'s confession on his death bed.
He had loved it madly and exclusively; but this fatal passion, which had
ruined and corrupted France, had not at any rate remained infructuous.
Louis XIV. had the good fortune to profit by the efforts of his
predecessors as well as of his own servants: Richelieu and Mazarin, Conde
and Turenne, Luxembourg, Catinat, Vauban, Villars, and Louvois, all
toiled at the same work; under his reign France was intoxicated with
excess of the pride of conquest, but she did not lose all its fruits; she
witnessed the conclusion of five peaces, mostly glorious, the last sadly
honorable; all tended to consolidate the unity and power of the kingdom;
it is to the treaties of the Pyrenees, of Westphalia, of Nimeguen, of
Ryswick, and of Utrecht, all signed with the name of Louis XIV., that
France owed Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, Flanders, and Franche-Comte. Her
glory has more than once cost her dear; it has never been worth so much
and such solid increment to her territory.

CHAPTER XLVI.----LOUIS XIV. AND HOME ADMINISTRATION.

It is King Louis XIV.'s distinction and heavy, burden in the eyes of
history that it is, impossible to tell of anything in his reign without
constantly recurring to himself. He had two ministers of th