Notwithstanding that Anne of Austria had good reason to execrate the cardinal for his injustice and malignity to herself personally, she did full honor to his merits as a statesman; and years after his death, when at the zenith of her popularity as regent, she said once, looking up at a portrait of Richelieu which hung in the state-saloon of the Palais Cardinal: “Were that man alive now, he would be more powerful than ever.” It was a generous and exhaustive tribute to the memory of those services which had consolidated the monarchy in France, and made her own position what it was. The name of Palais Cardinal, which, despite its equivocal grammar, was appropriate while Richelieu inhabited it, ceased to be so when it passed into the possession of the crown. Anne was advised to change it, but refused to do so, at the solicitation of the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, who besought her to retain a name which so honorably associated Richelieu with the glorious reign of Louis XIII. Public opinion, however, prevailed before long, and the palace was henceforth by common consent designated as the Palais Royal. With its new name began a new era in its annals. Anne has been compared by some of her admirers and biographers to Blanche of Castille; but, while rendering full justice to the queenly qualities of the Austro-Spanish regent, we own that the comparison strikes us as being suggested rather by their circumstances than by the characters of the two queen-mothers who each played so remarkable a part in the history of their epochs. Blanche of Castille made it her first and paramount ambition to render her son worthy of that imperishable crown which awaited him in the Kingdom that is not of this world: Anne of Austria aimed at securing for hers the supremacy of earthly glory—at making him a great and powerful king. In each case, as it mostly happens, the omnipotent mother’s will worked out its own ideal. The minority of the future Grand Monarque opened in troubled times; the elements of the Fronde were fermenting deep down under the apparently smooth surface, and the _fêtes_, and masquerades, and merry-making with which the regent celebrated her tardy accession to sovereign power were soon followed by more exciting events. Mazarin had succeeded to Richelieu—oily, pliant Mazarin, so zealous in his endeavors to keep well with all parties; flattering the ambitious hopes of Gaston d’Orléans, and laying himself out with elaborate zeal to please the regent and secure her confidence; yielding outwardly, with alluring grace, to every caprice of her soft despotic sway; and pulling dexterously the complicated strings of the malcontents, Condé, and Conti, and Longueville, and many other illustrious personages who chafed uneasily under the sceptre of the foreigner; benevolent and outspoken, but irreclaimably despotic. Mazarin, in his desire to please all parties whom it was of use to propitiate, and make money plentiful