Scarce had death freed him from the Cardinal's
leading-strings than he snatched the reins of power, showed his ministers
that he meant to drive the coach. He has a head as fit for business as if
he had been the son of a woollen-draper. Mazarin took pains to keep him
ignorant of everything that a king ought to know; but that shrewd judgment
of his taught him that he must know as much as his servants, unless he
wanted them to be his masters. He has the pride of Lucifer, with a strength
of will and power of application as great as Richelieu's. You will live to
see that no second Richelieu, no new Mazarin, will arise in his reign. His
ministers will serve him, and go down before him, like Nicolas Fouquet, to
whom he has been implacable."
"Poor gentleman! My aunt told me that when his judges sentenced him to
banishment from France, the King changed the sentence to imprisonment for
life."
"I doubt if the King ever forgave those fetes at Vaux, which were designed
to dazzle Mademoiselle la Valliere, whom this man had the presumption to
love. One may pity so terrible a fall, yet it is but the ruin of a bold
sensualist, who played with millions as other men play with tennis balls,
and who would have drained the exchequer by his briberies and extravagances
if he had not been brought to a dead stop.
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