From here the boy merges into the man, and we must leave him. Strong of purpose, clear-headed and masterful, Louis the Fourteenth ruled as King of France for seventy-two years--the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Handsome in person, majestic in bearing, dignified, lavish, and proud; ruling France in one of the most splendid periods of its history--a period styled "the Augustan age" of France; flattered, feared, and absolutely obeyed, one would think, boys and girls, that so powerful a monarch must have been a happy man. But he was not. He lived to see children and grandchildren die around him, to see the armies of France, which he had thought invincible, yield again and again to the superior generalship of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and to regret with deep remorse the follies and extravagance of his early days. "My child," he said, in his last hours, to his great-grandson and heir, the little five-year-old Louis, "you are about to become a great king; do not imitate me either in my taste for building, or in my love of war. Endeavor, on the contrary, to live in peace with the neighboring nations; render to God all that you owe him, and cause his name to be honored by your subjects. Strive to relieve the burdens of your people, as I, alas! have failed to do." It is for us to remember that kings and conquerors are often unable to achieve the grandest success of life,--the ruling of themselves,--and that flattery and fear are not the true indications of greatness or of glory. No sadder instance of this in all history is to be found than in the life-story of this cold-hearted, successful, loveless, imperious, all-supreme, and yet friendless old man--one of the world's most powerful monarchs, Louis of Bourbon, Louis "the Great," Louis "the God-given," Louis the _Grande Monarque_, Louis the worn-out, unloving and unloved old man of magnificent Versailles. [Illustration] [Illustration] XI. CHARLES OF SWEDEN: THE BOY CONQUEROR. (_Known as King Charles the Twelfth of Sweden._) [A.D. 1699.] [Illustration] In an old, old palace on the rocky height of the _Slottsbacke_, or Palace Hill, in the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, there lived, just two hundred years ago, a bright young prince. His father was a stern and daring warrior-king--a man who had been a fighter from his earliest boyhood; who at fourteen had been present in four pitched battles with the Danes; and who, while yet scarce twelve years old, had charged the Danish line at the head of his guards and shot down the stout Danish colonel, who could not resist the spry young warrior; his mother was a sweet-faced Danish princess, a loving and gentle lady, who scarce ever heard a kind word from her stern-faced husband, and whose whole life was bound up in her precious little prince. [Illustration]