CHAPTER XLIV .-- --LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS CONQUESTS.

1661-1697.
Cardinal Mazarin on his death-bed had given the young king this advice: "Manage your affairs yourself, sir, and raise no more premier ministers to where your bounties have placed me; I have discovered, by what I might have done against your service, how dangerous it is for a king to put his servants in such a position." Mazarin knew thoroughly the king whose birth he had seen.

"He has in him the making of four kings and one honest man," he used to say.

Scarcely was the minister dead, when Louis XIV.

sent to summon his council: Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent Fouquet, and Secretaries of State Le Tellier, de Lionne, Brienne, Duplessis-Gueneguaud, and La Vrilliere.