On September 16, 1638, Paris was in a state of intense excitement and rejoicing. The booming of cannon resounded through the city, the people gave thanks in their churches, all the palaces of the nobility were illuminated, and so brilliant were the bonfires and torches in the evening that one could see to read on both sides of the Seine. The poor were feasted as never before, and there was no limit to the enthusiasm. The occasion of this unbounded rejoicing was the birth of an heir to the throne of France. Louis XIII., the son of Henry IV., the first of the Bourbons, was king. He had married the daughter of Philip III. of Spain, who was called Anne of Austria, after her mother. She was one of the most beautiful women of her time; but for twenty-two years she had lived nearly in a state of separation from her husband, and no living heir to the throne had been born. The king and the queen were not harmonious; and after the lapse of this long period, the birth of a son was regarded as an extraordinary, if not a miraculous event, especially by the devout people of the nation, who called the child the "God-given." Louis XIII. was personally a brave man, and had some good qualities; but as a ruler he was weak and incapable of governing his kingdom. He admitted Cardinal Richelieu to his cabinet, and the astute politician became his prime-minister, and was the actual ruler of France. The king fully appreciated the vast abilities of his great minister, even while he feared, if he did not hate him, and became but a pliant tool in the hands of the greatest statesman of his time. It is said that Richelieu was fascinated by the beauty and grace of Anne of Austria, and that she made a bitter enemy of the minister by repelling his courtesies. Be this as it may, they were never friends, except so far as the relations of state compelled them to be such. He died in 1642, naming Cardinal Mazarin as his successor. Before his death he had built up the power of France, and won for her an influential position among the governments of Europe. But he had repressed constitutional liberty, and severely burdened the people with taxation to carry on the wars he advocated. Two years after the birth of the Dauphin, as the heir to the throne was then called, another son was born to the king, the Duke of Anjou, who afterward became the Duke of Orleans. The brother of the king is called "Monsieur" in France, by courtesy; and he is so designated in various works of the time. Louis XIII. died when his two sons were respectively five and three years old, naming the queen as regent during the minority of the young king. Richelieu had died the year before, and Mazarin had been installed in his place.