with.”  The antagonism had been perpetuated between Colbert and Louvois; their rivalry in the state had been augmented by the contrary dispositions of the two ministers.  Both were passionately devoted to their work, laborious, indefatigable, honest in money matters, and both of fierce and domineering temper; but Louvois was more violent, more bold, less scrupulous as to ways and means of attaining his end, cruel in the exercise of his will and his wrath, less concerned about the sufferings of the people, more exclusively absorbed by one fixed idea; both rendered great service to the king, but Colbert performing for the prince and the state only useful offices in the way of order, economy, wise and far-sighted administration, courageous and steady opposition; Louvois ever urging the king on according to his bent, as haughty and more impassioned than he, entangling him and encouraging him in wars which rendered his own services necessary, without pity for the woes he entailed upon the nation.  It was the misfortune and the great fault of Louis XIV. that he preferred the counsels of Louvois to those of Colbert, and that he allowed all the functions so faithfully exercised by the dying minister to drop into the hands of his enemy and rival.

At sixty-four years of age Colbert succumbed to excess of labor and of cares.  That man, so cold and reserved, whom Madame de Sevigne called North, and Guy-Patin the Man of Marble (Vir marmoreus), felt that disgust for the things of life which appears so strikingly in the seventeenth century amongst those who were most ardently engaged in the affairs of the world.  He was suffering from stone; the king sent to inquire after him and wrote to him.  The dying man had his eyes closed; he did not open them.  “I do not want to hear anything more about him,” said he, when the king’s letter was brought to him; “now, at any rate, let him leave me alone.”  His thoughts were occupied with his soul’s salvation.  Madame de Maintenon used to accuse him of always thinking about his finances, and very little about religion.  He repeated bitterly, as the dying Cardinal Wolsey had previously said in the case of Henry, “If I had done for God what I have done for that man, I had been saved twice over; and now I know not what will become of me.”  He expired on the 6th of September, 1683; and on the 10th, Madame de Maintenon wrote to Madame de St. Geran, “The king is very well; he feels no more now than a slight sorrow.  The death of M. de Colbert afflicted him, and a great many people rejoiced at that affliction.  It is all stuff about the pernicious designs he had; and the king very cordially forgave him for having determined to die without reading his letter, in order to be better able to give his thoughts to God.  M. de Seignelay was anxious to step into all his posts, and has not obtained a single one; he has plenty of cleverness, but little moral conduct.  His pleasures always have precedence of his duties.  He has