d children flying
from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survived
to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid
beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers.
Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames went up from every
marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat,
within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown
were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest
was left on the fertile plains near what had once been Frankenthal. Not
a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny
hills round what had once been Heidelberg. No respect was shown to
palaces, to temples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works
of art, to monuments of the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the
Elector Palatine was turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital
was sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sick
lay were destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been built
were flung into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished,
and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The coffins were
broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds, [106] Treves,
with its fair bridge, its Roman amphitheatre, its venerable churches,
convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this
last crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mind
by the execrations of all the neighbouring nations, by the silence and
confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. He
had been more than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon,
the governess of his natural children. It would be hard to name any
woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in
her life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity.
Her first husband had supported himself by writing burlesque farces
and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no
longer boast of youth or beauty: but she possessed in an extraordinary
degree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions
age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most
highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has been well
compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tints
and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding;
an inexh