"You did worse to the French than to spill their blood. You corrupted the deep sources of their manners and their life. You made probity a mask. I laid my hand upon the great to repress their insolence; you beat them down and trampled upon their courage. You degraded nobility. You confounded conditions. You rendered all graces venal. You were afraid of the influence of merit. You permitted no man to approach you unless he could give you proof of a low, supple nature,--a nature complaisant to the solicitations of mischievous intrigue. You never received a true impression. You never had any real knowledge of men. You never believed anything but evil. You saw the worst in a man and drew your profit from it. To your base mind honour and virtue were fables. You needed knaves who could deceive the dupes whom you entrapped in business; you needed traffickers to consummate your schemes. So your name shall be reviled and odious." [Illustration: CARDINAL MAZARIN] This is a fair portrayal, as far as it goes; but it shows only one side (the worst side) of Mazarin's character. The portrait is peculiarly interesting from the fact that it was especially depicted and set forth for the instruction of the great-grandson of the woman who loved Mazarin. It is probable that stern appreciation of the duty of the representative of Divine Justice primed the virulence of the pious Fénelon, when he seated himself to point out an historical moral for the descendant of the weak Queen who sacrificed the prosperity of France on the altar of an insensate passion. La Grande Mademoiselle was one of Mazarin's most hostile enemies, and her memoirs evince unbending severity. The weakness of her criticism detracts from the importance of a work otherwise valuable as a contemporary chronicle. She regarded Mazarin's "lack of intelligence" as his worst fault. She was convinced that he possessed neither capacity nor judgment "because he acted from the belief that he could reject the talents of a Gaston d'Orléans with impunity. His conduct to Princes of the Blood proved that he lacked wisdom; he stinted the junior branches of their legitimate influence; he would not yield to the pillars of the throne the power that belonged to them by right; he thrust aside the heirs-presumptive, when he might have leaned upon them! Manifestly he was witless, stupid, unworthy the consideration of a prince." Mademoiselle asserted that Mazarin deserved the worst of fates and the scorn of the people. She believed that many evils could have been averted had Monsieur been consulted in regard to the government of the kingdom. She affirmed that it was her conviction that all good servants of the Crown owed it to their patriotism to arm and drive the Cardinal across the frontier of France. That was her conception of duty, and it smiled upon her from all points of the compass.