Louis XIV. was four years and a half old when his father died at Saint-Germain, aged forty-two. Tardy in everything, Louis XIII. was six weeks in dying. The state christening of his son was celebrated during his illness. When asked his name, the little lad replied, "I am Louis XIV." "Not yet, my son, not yet," murmured the dying King, "but shortly, if so it please God." Anne of Austria, named Regent by her husband's will, rules in her son's name. A splendid Court assembles round her, at the Louvre, at Saint-Germain, and at Fontainebleau. Her exiled favourites are there to do her homage. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, after a long sojourn in Spain, England, and Flanders,—for she loves travel and the adventures of the road, either masked, or disguised as a page, a priest, or a cavalier,—is reinstated in her Majesty's favour. In Spain the Duchess's vanity was gratified by enslaving a royal lover—the King of Spain, brother of Anne of Austria; in England she diverted herself with fomenting personal quarrels between Charles I. and Henrietta Maria; in Flanders—a dull country—she found little to amuse her. Mademoiselle de Hautefort (soon to become Duchesse and Maréchale de Schomberg) returns in obedience to the Queen's command, who wrote to her even when the King was alive, "Come, dearest friend, come quickly. I am all impatience to embrace you!" The Duchesse de Sennécy arrives from the provinces, and the Chevalier de Jars from England. The latter had been imprisoned in the Bastille, and threatened with torture by Richelieu, to force him to betray the Queen's correspondence with Spain at the time of the Val de Grâce conspiracy. He had been liberated, however, but while the Cardinal lived had remained in England. These, among many other faithful attendants, resume their places at the _petit coucher_, in the _grand cercle_, and at the morning _lever_.