M. de Montbazon having asked, ‘What is the matter, sir?’ he answered, ‘It is nothing,’ twice; but the second time so low that there was no making sure. These are the only words he spoke after he was wounded. “In a moment the carriage turned toward the Louvre. When he was at the steps where he had got into the carriage, which are those of the queen’s rooms, some wine was given him. Of course some one had already run forward to bear the news. Sieur de Cérisy, lieutenant of M. de Praslin’s company, having raised his head, he made a few movements with his eyes, then closed them immediately, without opening them again any more. He was carried up stairs by M. de Montbazon and Count de Curzon en Quercy and laid on the bed in his closet and at two o’clock carried to the bed in his chamber, where he was all the next day and Sunday. Somebody went and gave him holy water. I tell you nothing about the queen’s tears; all that must be imagined. As for the people of Paris, I think they never wept so much as on this occasion.” On the king’s death—and at the imperious instance of the duke of Épernon, who at once introduced the queen, and said in open session, as he exhibited his sword, “It is as yet in the scabbard, but it will have to leap therefrom unless this moment there be granted to the queen a title which is her due according to the order of nature and of justice”—the Parliament forthwith declared Mary regent of the kingdom. Thanks to Sully’s firm administration, there were, after the ordinary annual expenses were paid, at that time in the vaults of the Bastile, or in securities easily realizable, forty-one million three hundred and forty-five thousand livres, and there was nothing to suggest that extraordinary and urgent expenses would come to curtail this substantial reserve. The army was disbanded and reduced to from twelve to fifteen thousand men, French or Swiss. For a long time past no power in France had, at its accession, possessed so much material strength and so much moral authority.—_Guizot._ VII.—THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. Louis XIV. ruled everywhere, over his people, over his age, often over Europe; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over his court. Never were the wishes, the defects and the vices of a man so completely a law to other men as to the court of Louis XIV. during the whole period of his long life. When near to him, in the palace of Versailles, men lived and hoped and trembled; everywhere else in France, even at Paris, men vegetated. The existence of the great lords was concentrated in the court, about the person of the king. Scarcely could the most important duties bring them to absent themselves for any time. They returned quickly, with alacrity, with ardor; only poverty or a certain rustic pride kept gentlemen in their provinces. “The court does not make one happy,” says La Bruyère, “it prevents one from being so anywhere else.”