en exclaiming, "My poor family! my poor family! they will
be left without bread."

At the close of the third day M. Colbert entered the dying chamber
with a document in his hand, announcing that the king had restored to
the cardinal all his property, authorizing him to dispose of it as he
judged to be best.

It is scarcely possible that this trickery could have satisfied the
conscience of the cardinal. His confessor professed to be satisfied,
and granted the dying man that absolution which he had previously
withheld. Still Mazarin was extremely reluctant to die. He dressed
with the utmost care; painted his wrinkled brow and emaciate cheeks,
and resorted to all the appliances of art to maintain the aspect of
youth and vigor. But death could not thus be deceived. The destroying
angel on the 9th of March bore his spirit away to the judgment seat of
Christ. He died in the Chateau Mazarin, at the age of fifty-two,
having been virtually monarch of France for eighteen years.

[Illustration: CHATEAU MAZARIN.]

It appeared by the will of Mazarin that his property was vastly
greater even than the enormous sum which he had reluctantly admitted.
That portion of it which might be included under the term real estate,
consisting of houses, lands, etc., amounted to over fifty millions of
francs, while his personal effects, embracing the most costly
furniture, diamonds, and other jewels, of which he strictly forbade
any inventory to be taken, amounted to many millions more. The
legacies to his nieces and to other aristocratic friends were truly
princely. To the _poor_ he left a miserable pittance amounting to
about twelve hundred dollars.

The cardinal was a heartless, avaricious man, of but little ability,
and yet endowed with a very considerable degree of that cunning which
sometimes proves to be temporarily so successful in diplomatic
intrigues. The king was probably glad to be rid of him, for he could
not easily throw off a yoke to which he had been habituated from
childhood. During most of the cardinal's illness Louis continued his
usual round of feasting and dancing. Upon his death he manifested no
grief. It seems that he had previously made up his mind no longer to
be troubled by a prime minister, but to rule absolutely by his own
will.

Two days before the death of Mazarin, when he was no longer capable of
transacting any business, the president of the ecclesiastical assembly
inquired of the king "to whom he must hereaft