l well that it
had no right to confer the regency, hesitated, he laid his hand on his
sword, and declared, that, unless they did his bidding at once, his
sword should be drawn from its scabbard. This threat did its work.
Within three hours after the King's death, the Paris Parliament, which
had no right to give it, bestowed the regency on a woman who had no
capacity to take it.

At first things seemed to brighten a little. The Queen-Regent sent such
urgent messages to Sully that he left his stronghold of the Bastille and
went to the palace. She declared to him, before the assembled Court,
that he must govern France still. With tears she gave the young King
into his arms, telling Louis that Sully was his father's best friend,
and bidding him pray the old statesman to serve the State yet longer.

But soon this good scene changed. Mary had a foster-sister, Leonora
Galligai, and Leonora was married to an Italian adventurer, Concini.
These seemed a poor couple, worthless and shiftless, their only stock in
trade Leonora's Italian cunning; but this stock soon came to be of
vast account, for thereby she soon managed to bind and rule the
Queen-Regent,--managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a
year,--managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at
Court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a
few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly
half a million livres,--and, soon after, the post of First Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million,--and,
soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at
immense prices. Leonora, also, was not idle, and among her many
gains was a bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain
financiers under trial for fraud.

Next came the turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France
had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts
had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII. had
done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI. had done much to crush
it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the
policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left
France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut
the root of the evil. The French nobility continued practically a
serf-holding nobility.

Despite, then, the curb put upon many old pretensions of the nobles, the