The infinite resources of his mind, the agreeableness of his conversation, his perseverance combined with the pliancy of his will, the services he was rendering France, the successes he in the long ruin frequently obtained, and his ready apparent resignation under his reverses, for a while made up for or palliated his faults, his falsehoods, his perfidies, his iniquities; but when evil is predominant at the bottom of a man's soul, he cannot do without youth and success; he cannot make head against age and decay, reverse of fortune and the approach of death; and so Louis XI.

when old in years, master-power still though beaten in his last game of policy, appeared to all as he really was and as he had been prediscerned to be by only such eminent observers as Commynes, that is, a crooked, swindling, utterly selfish, vindictive, cruel man.

Not only did he hunt down implacably the men who, after having served him, had betrayed or deserted him; he revelled in the vengeance he took and the sufferings he inflicted on them.

He had raised to the highest rank both in state and church the son of a cobbler, or, according to others, of a tailor, one John de Balue, born in 1421, at the market-town of Angles, in Poitou.

After having chosen him, as an intelligent and a clever young priest, for his secretary and almoner, Louis made him successively clerical councillor in the parliament of Paris, then Bishop of Evreux, and afterwards cardinal; and he employed him in his most private affairs.