The year had not yet rolled away, and the Duchess of Savoy had already lost every atom of illusion.  Since the 13th of August, Cardinal Mazarin had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de Haro, representing Philip IV.  The ministers had held a meeting in the middle of the Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where a pavilion had been erected on the boundary-line between the two states.  On the 7th of November the peace of the Pyrenees was signed at last; it put an end to a war which had continued for twenty-three years, often internecine, always burdensome, and which had ruined the finances of the two countries.  France was the gainer of Artois and Roussillon, and of several places in Flanders, Hainault, and Luxembourg; and the peace of Westphalia was recognized by Spain, to whom France restored all that she held in Catalonia and in Franche-Comte.  Philip IV. had refused to include Portugal in the treaty.  The Infanta received as dowry five hundred thousand gold crowns, and renounced all her rights to the throne of Spain; the Prince of Conde was taken back to favor by the king, and declared that he would fain redeem with his blood all the hostilities he had committed in and out of France.  The king restored him to all his honors and dignities, gave him the government of Burgundy, and bestowed on his son, the Duke of Enghien, the office of Grand Master of France.  The honor of the King of Spain was saved, he did not abandon his allies, and he made a great match for his daughter.  But the eyes of Europe were not blinded; it was France that triumphed; the policy of Cardinal Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin was everywhere successful.  The work of Henry IV. was completed, the house of Austria was humiliated and vanquished in both its branches; the man who had concluded the peace of Westphalia and the peace of the Pyrenees had a right to say, “I am more French in heart than in speech.”

The Prince of Conde returned to court, “as if he had never gone away,” says Mdlle. de Montpensier. [Memoires, t. iii. p. 451.] “The king talked familiarly with him of all that he had done both in France and in Flanders, and that with as much gusto as if all those things had taken place for his service.”  “The prince discovered him to be so great in every point that, from the first moment at which he could approach him, he comprehended, as it appeared, that the time had come to humble himself.  That genius for sovereignty and command which God had implanted in the king, and which was beginning to show itself, persuaded the Prince of Conde that all which remained of the previous reign was about to be annihilated.” [Memoires de Madame de Motteville, t. v. p. 39.] From that day King Louis XIV. had no more submissive subject than the great Conde.