me with your counsels when I ask for them.  Beyond the general business of the seal, in which I do not intend to make any alteration, I beg and command you, Mr. Chancellor, to put the seal of authority to nothing without my orders and without having spoken to me thereof, unless a secretary of state shall bring them to you on my behalf. . . .  And for you, gentlemen,” addressing the secretaries of state, “I warn you not to sign anything, even a safety-warrant or passport, without my command, to report every day to me personally, and to favor nobody in your monthly rolls.  Mr. Superintendent, I have explained to you my intentions; I beg that you will employ the services of M. Colbert, whom the late cardinal recommended to me.”

The king’s councillors were men of experience; and they, all recognized the master’s tone.  From timidity or respect, Louis XIV. had tolerated the yoke of Mazarin, not, however, without impatience and in expectation of his own turn. [Portraits de la Cour, Archives curieuses, t. viii. p. 371.] “The cardinal,” said he one day, “does just as he pleases, and I put up with it because of the good service he has rendered me, but I shall be master in my turn;” and he added, “the king my grandfather did great things, and left some to do; if God gives me grace to live twenty years longer, perhaps I may do as much or more.”  God was to grant Louis XIV. more time and power than he asked for, but it was Henry IV.’s good fortune to maintain his greatness at the sword’s point, without ever having leisure to become intoxicated with it.  Absolute power is in its nature so unwholesome and dangerous that the strongest mind cannot always withstand it.  It was Louis XIV.’s misfortune to be king for seventy-two years, and to reign fifty-six as sovereign master.

“Many people made up their minds,” says the king in his Memoires [t. ii. p. 392], “that my assiduity in work was but a heat which would soon cool; but time showed them what to think of it, for they saw me constantly going on in the same way, wishing to be informed of all that took place, listening to the prayers and complaints of my meanest subjects, knowing the number of my troops and the condition of my fortresses, treating directly with foreign ministers, receiving despatches, making in person part of the replies and giving my secretaries the substance of the others, regulating the receipts and expenditures of my kingdom, having reports made to myself in person by those who were in important offices, keeping my affairs secret, distributing graces according to my own choice, reserving to myself alone all my authority, and confining those who served me to a modest position very far from the elevation of premier ministers.”

The young king, from the first, regulated his life and his time:  “I laid it down as a law to myself,” he says in his Instructions au Dauphin, “to work regularly twice a day.  I cannot tell you what fruit I reaped immediately after this resolution.  I felt myself rising as it were both in mind and courage; I found myself quite another being; I discovered in myself what I had no idea of, and I joyfully reproached myself for having been so long ignorant of it.  Then it dawned upon me that I was king, and was born to be.”