Chapter I: Preface

We all live a double life: the external life which the world sees, and the internal life of hopes and fears, joys and griefs, temptations and sins, which the world sees not, and of which it knows but little. None lead this double life more emphatically than those who are seated upon thrones.

Though this historic sketch contains allusions to all the most important events in the reign of Louis XIV., it has been the main object of the writer to develop the inner life of the palace; to lead the reader into the interior of the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles, and Marly, and to exhibit the monarch as a man, in the details of domestic privacy.

This can more easily be done in reference to Louis XIV. than any other king. Very many of the prominent members of his household left their autobiographies, filled with the minutest incidents of every-day life.

It is impossible to give any correct idea of the life of this proud monarch without allusion to the corruption in the midst of which he spent his days. Still, the writer, while faithful to fact, has endeavored so to describe these scenes that any father can safely read the narrative aloud to his family.

There are few chapters in history more replete with horrors than that which records the "Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." The facts given are beyond all possibility of contradiction. In the contemplation of these scenes the mind pauses, bewildered by the reflection forced upon it, that many of the actors in these fiend-like outrages were inspired by motives akin to sincerity and conscientiousness.

The thoughtful reader will perceive that in this long and wicked reign Louis XIV. was sowing the wind from which his descendants reaped the whirlwind. It was the despotism of Louis XIV. and of Louis XV. which ushered in that most sublime of all earthly dramas, the French Revolution.

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

New Haven, Conn., 1870.

CONTENTS.

Chapter Page

I. BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 13

II. THE BOY-KING 49

III. MATRIMONIAL PROJECTS 86

IV. THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING 121

V. FESTIVITIES OF THE COURT 159

VI. DEATH IN THE PALACE 194

VII. THE WAR IN HOLLAND 234

VIII. MADAME DE MAINTENON 268

IX. THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES 302

X. THE SECRET MARRIAGE 330

XI. INTRIGUES AND WARS 359

XII. LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XIV. 384

ENGRAVINGS.

Page

LOUIS XIV. _Frontispiece._

THE CASTLE OF BLOIS 18

PALACE OF ST. GERMAIN-EN-LAYE 23

THE PALAIS ROYAL 31

PALACE OF THE LUXEMBOURG 52

THE TUILERIES 74

THE CASTLE OF VINCENNES 79

PALACE OF CHANTILLY 98

VIEW OF FONTAINEBLEAU 103

ISLE OF PHEASANTS 129

THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES 139

PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU 145

CHATEAU MAZARIN 157

CHATEAU DE VAUX 176

CONVENT OF VAL DE GRACE 198

THE PALACE OF ST. CLOUD 201

INTERIOR OF ST. DENIS 208

ST. DENIS 236

PORTE ST. DENIS 254

MADAME DE MAINTENON 273

PALACE OF VERSAILLES 297

PARTERRE OF VERSAILLES 324

RACINE AND BOILEAU 339

THE TRIANON 351

MARLY 354

LOUIS XIV. DIRECTING THE SIEGE 362

FRONT VIEW OF ST. GERMAIN 376

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV. 409

LOUIS XIV.