of France. And then the other cardinal, the long lean
one who had taken his pocket-money, and had grudged him his food, and
had dressed him in old clothes. How well he could recall the day when
Mazarin had rouged himself for the last time, and how the court had
danced with joy at the news that he was no more! And his mother, too,
how beautiful she was, and how masterful! Could he not remember how
bravely she had borne herself during that war in which the power of the
great nobles had been broken, and how she had at last lain down to die,
imploring the priests not to stain her cap-strings with their holy oils!
And then he thought of what he had done himself, how he had shorn down
his great subjects until, instead of being like a tree among saplings,
he had been alone, far above all others, with his shadow covering the
whole land. Then there were his wars and his laws and his treaties.
Under his care France had overflowed her frontiers both on the north and
on the east, and yet had been so welded together internally that she had
but one voice, with which she spoke through him. And then there was
that line of beautiful faces which wavered up in front of him. There
was Olympe de Mancini, whose Italian eyes had first taught him that
there is a power which can rule over a king; her sister, too, Marie de
Mancini; his wife, with her dark little sun-browned face; Henrietta of
England, whose death had first shown him the horrors which lie in life;
La Valliere, Montespan, Fontanges. Some were dead; some were in
convents. Some who had been wicked and beautiful were now only wicked.
And what had been the outcome of all this troubled, striving life of
his? He was already at the outer verge of his middle years; he had lost
his taste for the pleasures of his youth; gout and vertigo were ever at
his foot and at his head to remind him that between them lay a kingdom
which he could not hope to govern. And after all these years he had not
won a single true friend, not one, in his family, in his court, in his
country, save only this woman whom he was to wed that night. And she,
how patient she was, how good, how lofty! With her he might hope to
wipe off by the true glory of his remaining years all the sin and the
folly of the past. Would that the archbishop might come, that he might
feel that she was indeed his, that he held her with hooks of steel which
would bind them as long as life should last!

There came a tap at the doo