The cardinal’s four nieces were nearly always present at these gatherings. They were all charming and beautiful, Olympe, Hortense and Laure Mancini, though not absolutely and perfectly sweet-tempered. It was reserved to Marie, less regularly featured than her sisters, but far more fascinating and amiable, to bear the palm, and to win the attentions of the king. These were carried so far, that it was thought by many—Mazarin indeed hoped, and his hopes were apt to find fulfilment—that she would be queen. She assumed great authority over Louis, to the extent of not allowing him to cast stray glances of admiration on the ladies of the Court or at her sisters. Louis, however, was apt to rebel on this head. To this influence, Marie, then a girl of fourteen only, the well-known fact is ascribed of Louis, then but a youth of sixteen, hurrying from the chase, back to Paris, and booted and spurred, his whip in his hand, entering the grand council chamber of the Parliament, where some new financial edicts were being considered after the holding of a Bed of Justice, and revised with a view to seeking some modification of them. In haughty tones, and with a majestic air, Louis bade the councillors disperse and leave the edicts as they had been drawn up. “Monsieur le President,” he said, “the evils attending these meetings of Parliament are but too well known. Henceforward I forbid them, as I also forbid these edicts just registered, to be tampered with.” These words echoed through all Europe. They provoked murmurs long and deep of the Parliament, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the prudence of Turenne was able to keep under the widespread dissatisfaction. The policy of Mazarin’s “education” of the young king was already bearing the fruit of the future misery of the country which his Eminence’s alien authority so disastrously ruled. The intimacy of Ninon and Marie Mancini grew into friendship, and Marie’s confidences made it clear to Ninon that it was her uncle’s intention, if not her own avowed one, that she should be the wife of Louis XIV. But the constancy of the great young monarch was ever a fragile thing. CHAPTER XII The Whirligig of Time, and an Old Friend—Going to the Fair—A Terrible Experience—The Young Abbé—“The Brigands of La Trappe”—The New Ordering—An Enduring Memory—The King over the Water—Unfulfilled Aspirations—“Not Good-looking.” _Tempora mutantur._ Ninon, in the course of the years which were now bringing her to middle life, had seen many changes; but when her friend St Evrémond came back about this time from the wars, after seven or eight years’ absence, he told her that she had not changed with them. Beautiful and youthful-looking as ever he assured her she was, and to prove his words, he took a little mirror in one hand, and in the other the portrait Rubens had painted of her years before, and bade her make the comparison herself.