the defiles of mountains in the depths of winter just as he would have orange trees travel in the month of February.  “I received orders to send off to Versailles from La Meilleraye the orange trees which the Duke of Mazarin gave the king,” writes Superintendent Foucauld in his journal.  “M.  Louvois, in spite of the representations I made him, would have them sent by carriage through the snow and ice.  They arrived leafless at Versailles, and several are dead.  I had sent him word that the king could take towns in winter, but could not make orange trees bear removal from their hothouses.”  The nature and the consciences of the Protestants were all that withstood Louis XIV. and Louvois.  On the 16th of July, 1691, death suddenly removed the minister, fallen in royal favor, detested and dreaded in France, universally hated in Europe, leaving, however, the king, France, and Europe with the feeling that a great power had fallen, a great deal of merit disappeared.  “I doubt not,” wrote Louis XIV. to Marshal Boufflers, “that, as you are very zealous for my service, you will be sorry for the death of a man who served me well.”  “Louvois,” said the Marquis of La Fare, “should never have been born, or should have lived longer.”  The public feeling was expressed in an anonymous epitaph: 

“Here lieth he who to his will
Bent every one, knew everything
Louvois, beloved by no one,
still Leaves everybody sorrowing.”

The king felt his loss, but did not regret the minister whose tyranny and violence were beginning to be oppressive to him.  He felt himself to be more than ever master in the presence of the young or inexperienced men to whom he henceforth intrusted his affairs.  Louvois’ son, Barbezieux, had the reversion of the war department; Pontchartrain, who had been comptroller of finance ever since the retirement of Lepelletier, had been appointed to the navy in 1690, at the death of Seignelay.  “M. de Pontchartrain had begged the king not to give him the navy,” says Dangeau ingenuously, “because he knew nothing at all about it; but the king’s will was absolute that he should take it.  He now has all that M. de Colbert had, except the buildments.”  What mattered the inexperience of ministers?  The king thought that he alone sufficed for all.

God had left it to time to undeceive the all-powerful monarch; he alone held out amidst the ruins; after the fathers the sons were falling around him; Seignelay had followed Colbert to the tomb; Louvois was dead after Michael Le Tellier; Barbezieux died in his turn in 1701.  “This secretary of state had naturally good wits, lively and ready conception, and great mastery of details in which his father had trained him early,” writes the Marquis of Argenson.  He had been spoiled in youth by everybody but his father.  He was obliged to put himself at the mercy of his officials, but he always kept up his position over them, for the son of M. de Louvois, their creator, so to speak, could not fail to inspire