objects of art he had been all his life collecting, he said, ‘All that must be left behind!’ And, turning round, he added, ’And that too!  What trouble I have had to obtain all these things!  I shall never see them more where I am going.’” He had himself removed to Vincennes, of which he was governor.  There he continued to regulate all the affairs of state, striving to initiate the young king in the government.  “Nobody,” Turenne used to say, “works so much as the cardinal, or discovers so many expedients with great clearness of mind for the terminating of much business of different sorts.”  The dying minister recommended to the king MM.  Le Tellier and de Lionne, and he added, “Sir, to you I owe everything; but I consider that I to some extent acquit myself of my obligation to your Majesty by giving you M. Colbert.”  The cardinal, uneasy about the large possessions he left, had found a way of securing them to his heirs by making, during his lifetime, a gift of the whole of them to the king.  Louis XIV. at once returned it.  The minister had lately placed his two nieces, the Princess of Conti and the Countess of Soissons, at the head of the household of two queens; he had married his niece, Hortensia Mancini, to the Duke of La Meilleraye, who took the title of Duke of Mazarin.  The father of this duke was the relative and protege of Cardinal Richelieu, for whom Mazarin had always preserved a feeling of great gratitude.  It was to him and his wife that he left the remainder of his vast possessions, after having distributed amongst all his relatives liberal bequests to an enormous amount.  The pictures and jewels went to the king, to Monsieur, and to the queens.  A considerable sum was employed for the foundation and endowment of the College des Quatre Nations (now the Palais de l’Institut), intended for the education of sixty children of the four provinces re-united to France by the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, Alsace, Roussillon, Artois, and Pignerol.  The cardinal’s fortune was estimated at fifty millions.

Mazarin had scarcely finished making his final dispositions when his malady increased to a violent pitch.  “On the 5th of March, forty hours’ public prayers were ordered in all the churches of Paris, which is not generally done except in the case of kings,” says Madame de Motteville.  The cardinal had sent for M. Jolt, parish-priest of St. Nicholas des Champs, a man of great reputation for piety, and begged him not to leave him.  “I have misgivings about not being sufficiently afraid of death,” he said to his confessor.  He felt his own pulse himself, muttering quite low, “I shall have a great deal more to suffer.”  The king had left him on the 7th of March, in the evening.  He did not see him again and sent to summon the ministers.  Already the living was taking the place of the dying, with a commencement of pomp and circumstance which excited wonder at the changes of the world.  “On the 9th, between