He was drowned in vanity; and so deeply, that at his public suppers—­all the Court present, musicians also—­he would hum these self-same praises between his teeth, when the music they were set to was played!

And yet, it must be admitted, he might have done better.  Though his intellect, as I have said, was beneath mediocrity, it was capable of being formed.  He loved glory, was fond of order and regularity; was by disposition prudent, moderate, discreet, master of his movements and his tongue.  Will it be believed?  He was also by disposition good and just!  God had sufficiently gifted him to enable him to be a good King; perhaps even a, tolerably great King!  All the evil came to him from elsewhere.  His early education was so neglected that nobody dared approach his apartment.  He has often been heard to speak of those times with bitterness, and even to relate that, one evening he was found in the basin of the Palais Royal garden fountain, into which he had fallen!  He was scarcely taught how to read or write, and remained so ignorant, that the most familiar historical and other facts were utterly unknown to him!  He fell, accordingly, and sometimes even in public, into the grossest absurdities.

It was his vanity, his desire for glory, that led him, soon after the death of the King of Spain, to make that event the pretext for war; in spite of the renunciations so recently made, so carefully stipulated, in the marriage contract.  He marched into Flanders; his conquests there were rapid; the passage of the Rhine was admirable; the triple alliance of England, Sweden, and Holland only animated him.  In the midst of winter he took Franche-Comte, by restoring which at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he preserved his conquests in Flanders.  All was flourishing then in the state.  Riches everywhere.  Colbert had placed the finances, the navy, commerce, manufactures, letters even, upon the highest point; and this age, like that of Augustus, produced in abundance illustrious men of all kinds,-even those illustrious only in pleasures.

Le Tellier and Louvois, his son, who had the war department, trembled at the success and at the credit of Colbert, and had no difficulty in putting into the head of the King a new war, the success of which caused such fear to all Europe that France never recovered from it, and after having been upon the point of succumbing to this war, for a long time felt the weight and misfortune of it.  Such was the real cause of that famous Dutch war, to which the King allowed himself to be pushed, and which his love for Madame de Montespan rendered so unfortunate for his glory and for his kingdom.  Everything being conquered, everything taken, and Amsterdam ready to give up her keys, the King yields to his impatience, quits the army, flies to Versailles, and destroys in an instant all the success of his arms!  He repaired this disgrace by a second conquest, in person, of Franche-Comte, which this time was preserved by France.