arranged that Louis should marry the Infanta of Spain, Maria Theresa, that the possession of Perpignan, Roussillon, Arras, and Artois, should be assured to France, and that Condé should be restored to his rank and possessions, and be allowed to return to France.

LOUIS XIV.

FROM THE TREATY OF THE PYRENNEES, 1659, TO THE TREATY OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, 1668.

PART 2.

THE Duke of Orleans died 2nd of February, 1660; as he left no sons his duchy reverted to the crown, and was bestowed by Louis XIV. on his brother Philip. The marriage of the king took place the same year. It was celebrated with great magnificence in the Isle of Pheasants. The infanta upon becoming queen of France renounced all right of succession to the crown of Spain, and Louis was required to join in this renunciation.

"The

Cardinal Mazarin died the following year. He had been successful in private as well as in public fortune. pecuniary wealth, the valuables, the pictures of Mazarin, were immense. He was fond of hoarding-a passion that seized him when he first found himself banished and destitute. His love of pictures was as strong as his love of power, stronger, since it survived. A fatal malady had seized on the cardinal whilst engaged in the conferences of the treaty, and worn by mental fatigue, he brought it home with him to the Louvre. He consulted Guenaud, the great physician, who told him that he had two months to live. Some days after receiving this dread mandate, Brienne perceived the cardinal in night-cap and dressing-gown,

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tottering along his gallery, pointing to his pictures, and exclaiming: Must I quit all these?' He saw Brienne, and seized him: 'Look,' exclaimed he, 'look at that Correggio! this Venus of Titian! that imcomparable Deluge of Caracci! Ah! my friend, I must quit all these, farewell, dear pictures, that I loved so dearly, and that cost me so much!' His friend surprised him slumbering in his chair another time, and murmuring: Guenaud has said it! Guenaud has said it! A few days before his death, he caused himself to be dressed, shaved, rouged, and painted, so that he never looked so fresh and vermilion' in his life. In this state he was carried in his chair to the promenade, when the envious courtiers cruelly rallied and paid him ironical compliments on his appearance. Cards were the amusements of his deathbed, his hand being held by others: and they were only interrupted by the visit of the papal Nuncio, who came to give the cardinal that plenary indulgence to which the prelates of the sacred college are officially entitled. Mazarin expired on the 9th of March, 1661."-Crowe.

The king upon the death of his minister announced his intentions of governing alone, and until the end of his life he retained all authority in his own hands, and frequently worked during eight hours a day. His first act was the disgrace of Fouquet, the superintendent of finance, who was a prodigal and licentious character. He was condemmed to perpetual confinement in the Bastille and Pignerol; he merited his fall, but he was honest as a treasurer, and his character was redeemed by many traits of generosity. Louis did not fill the vacant office of superintendent, but made Colbert, a man of humble origin and of great abilities, comptroller-general of the finances.

In 1662, the palace of Versailles was built; it had before been merely a rendezvous for hunting. A quarrel took place at this time at Rome, between the people of the Duke of Créqui, ambassador at Rome, and some Corsicans of the Pope's guard; the populace fired upon the duke's carriage, and wounded some of his servants. Louis immediately took possession of Avignon, and threatened to carry war into Italy. The Pope, however, offered every satisfaction in his power, and caused a column to be raised in memory of the event. In 1665 Philip IV. of Spain died, leaving one son, Charles II., as his successor. Although by the treaty of the Pyrennees Louis had renounced all claim to the possessions of his father-in-law, he now claimed Flanders, Brabant, and Franche-Comté. Seeing that the Emperor of Austria did not interfere, Louis marched into Flanders, 1667, and took possession of it, as also of Lille, Tournay, Mons, and Charleroi, almost without shedding blood. The following year the Prince of Condé entered Franche-Comté; the whole province submitted to the French in the course of three weeks. England, Holland, and Sweden, alarmed by these rapid conquests, interfered; and Louis, fearing for his navy, made peace. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, he restored Franche-Comté, but retained the principal part of his Flemish conquests.

Some months after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, an unknown prisoner was sent secretly to the castle of the island of St. Margaret, in the Mediterranean. During the journey he is said to have worn a mask of iron, an order having been given that he should be put to death if he disclosed his features. He was removed to the Bastille, in Paris, in 1690, He died there in 1703, and was buried in the night. Various

surmises have arisen respecting the name of this prisoner. It has been asserted that he was the son of Anne of Austria, and twin brother of Louis XIV. He was at one time supposed to be Fouquet, the disgraced minister of finances, and at another he was said to be the Duke of Beaufort. "Amidst these various notions, the following existed, but until 1825 obtained little credit, that the Man in the Iron Mask " was Count Ercolo Antonio Matthioli, a senator of Mantua, a private agent of Ferdinand Charles, Duke of Mantua, and that he suffered this long and strange imprisonment for having deceived and disappointed Louis XIV., in a secret treaty for the purchase of the fortress of Casale, the key of Italy; the agents of Spain and Austria having offered him a higher bribe. Yet their infamous scheme could not have been brought to light without exposing the shame of all the principals concerned.

The truth of this latter statement was proved without any reasonable doubt, in 1826, by the publication of "The true History of the State Prisoner, commonly called the Iron Mask, extracted from documents in the French Royal Archives, by the Hon. George Agar Ellis." In this work it is established that, immediately after Louis perceived that he had been duped, Matthioli was arrested by the king's order. Though armed, he offered no resistance, but was carried that night to Pignerol; the leader of the party alone knowing the prisoner, whom, for better concealment, he named L'Estang. During his confinement at Pignerol, his mind began to wander, and he was placed in the same room with an insane Jacobin monk. In 1681 the count and his companion were removed in a litter, and under military escort, to Exiles, a few leagues from Pignerol. Here the monk died,

and in 1687, St. Mars, the custodian who had removed with his charge to the Isle of St. Marguerite, reported of one prisoner only, whom we are warranted in concluding was Matthioli, the man in the iron mask. During his removal hither he is thought to have been first compelled to wear a mask, to hide his features, "not, as has been erroneously stated, a mask of iron," which could not have been borne upon the face for any long continuance of time, but one of black velvet, strengthened with whalebone, and fastened behind the head with a padlock, and further secured by a seal, which did not prevent the prisoner from eating and drinking, or impede his respiration. At St. Marguerite he passed eleven years, and was described by Voltaire as richly dressed, supplied with laces from Paris, served at table with silver plate, wearing a mask of iron, and plucking out the hairs of his beard with steel pincers-all which were gross exaggerations. In 1698 St. Mars removed with his prisoner to the Bastille; Matthioli travelled in a litter, and when St. Mars halted near his own estate of Pulteau, the unknown was seen in a black mask, a circumstance talked of in the neighbourhood until our time. The peasants observed that his teeth and lips were seen, that he was tall, and had grey hair. His imprisonment extended to twenty-four and a half years, according to the horrible order, issued by Louis, " that he should have nothing which could make life agreeable." He died in November, 1703, being then sixty-three years of age, although the register of his burial states him as Marchiali, aged about 45 years." But persons who died in the Bastille were frequently interred under false names and ages; and Louis and the Duke of Mantua were still alive. On the decease of the prisoner, his keeper scraped and whitewashed

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