ober 2,
1614, and of the subtlety, quite Italian, with which the queen-mother
played her part amid the intrigues of her followers and her adversaries.
M. Louis Batiffol, in an article in the _Revue de Paris_, December,
1896, comments on a collection of manuscripts which he has found in the
Bibliotheque Nationale, communications furnished by Louis XIII to the
_Gazette_, published by Renaudot, on various military transactions. The
communications were all edited, and not printed from these originals,
because, although he was very fond of writing for the new art of
printing, the king was "absolutely destitute of orthography, and was
ignorant of the simplest rules of grammar. He wrote stiffly and with
great care, in letters thin and long, more than a centimetre in length,
he re-read, erased, and corrected in pencil the most awkward phrases,
but his style remained at the end that of a child." Before being sent to
the printer, these royal communications were corrected by one of his
secretaries, M. Lucas, and afterward went through the hands of
Richelieu. Nevertheless, M. Batiffol finds that these articles give "a
very favorable impression of a king who presents so unimportant a
figure in history and yet who did not lack for real qualities,"--an
impression of impassibility, of self-control under all circumstances,
and of a very serious application to the details of the affairs that
came before him. "He was a soldier devoted to his profession, a true
soldier, who loved the whistling of bullets, and would remain all night
on horseback under a beating rain if he expected an attack from the
enemy."

[Illustration: AFTER THE COTILLION.

After a water-color by Maurice Bonvoison; "Mars."]

He was also a superior market-gardener, and prided himself on having the
earliest and finest spring vegetables, superintending all the details of
their cultivation himself. None of these early crops, however, appeared
on his own table, but were furnished, at fancy prices, to such luxurious
consumers as the wealthy Pierre de Puget, Seigneur de Montauron,
Conseiller du roi. One day, in 1628, being, as usual, at a loss for
occupation, and having successfully concocted a _fricandeau_ for dinner,
he amused himself by shaving all his courtiers, leaving them only a
little tuft on the chin. This, naturally, set the fashion for beards for
some time.

It also became the custom for gentlemen to perfume themselves, to
disguise the odor of the pipe, which w