“I was walking,” says Brienne, “in the small gallery in which is the woollen tapestry representing Scipio--the Cardinal did not possess a finer one. By the noise of his slippers I heard him coming, shuffling along like a suffering man or a convalescent. I hid myself behind the tapestry and heard him say, ‘I must leave all this!’ Being very weak he stopped at every step, leaning first to one side and then to the other; gazing at the various objects of his collection, and in a voice that came from his heart, he kept on repeating ‘I must leave all this!’ Then turning his head to another side--‘and also that! What trouble I had to buy all these things. How can I leave them without regret?--I shall not be able to see them where I am going.’ I gave a sigh, I could not help it, and he heard me. ‘Who is there?’ ‘It is I, Monseigneur----’ ‘Come here,’ he said to me in a doleful tone. He was nude, only covered with his _robe de chambre de camelot_ lined with _petit-gris_. He said, ‘Give me your hand, I am so weak; I can hardly bear it----’ Then returning to his first idea, ‘Do you see, my friend, that fine painting by Correggio, that Venus by Titian and that incomparable Deluge by Carracci--I know that you too love and understand painting. Alas, my dear friend, I must leave all this. Good-bye, dear paintings that I have loved so much, that have cost me so high a price!’” (Brienne, _Memoires_, II, XIV). These three paintings, Correggio’s Sposalizio, Titian’s Venus, and Carracci’s work, are now in the Louvre Museum. “_Que j’ai tant aimés et qui m’ont tant couté!_” The second part of the sad exclamation would indeed seem to belong to this shrewd adventurer, but those not knowing to what lengths the passion for collecting can go, would hardly imagine that a man of Mazarin’s temperament could love, really love, anything on earth but power and intrigue.