This marriage of convenience might possibly have been fairly happy, as such marriages go, but for the strange character of the Duc de Mazarin; for his wife was amiable and long-suffering, if giddy and volatile. Considering all that we have read of this man, we are almost inclined to agree with Madame de Sévigné when she says, that "the mere sight of him was a justification of his wife's conduct." Molière took him as the model of Orgon in his "Tartuffe." Religion was the subject on which his peculiarities were most offensively noticeable. He was a Jansenist, a sort of Roman Catholic Puritan, and the willing tool of the Jansenist monks and nuns with whom he surrounded himself, and on whom he, in other respects miserly, lavished enormous sums.
For nearly sixty years his _outré_ acts of devotion afforded small-talk for the Court of France. The superb statues and pictures in the Palais Mazarin--now the Bibliothèque Nationale--in which he resided having offended his sense of decency, he proceeded, with a handkerchief in one hand and a hammer in the other, to cover up or destroy his rare marbles and subject his Titians and Coreggios to the same radical reforms. Colbert, whom the King, on hearing of this vandalism, sent to expostulate with him, arrived during the process of demolition. The Minister, who knew to a farthing what the _chefs d'oeuvre_ had cost the Cardinal, did what he could to save such works of art as remained undesecrated. But the Duc de Mazarin complained to the King, who, being in the habit of borrowing money from him, contented himself with deploring his aberration.
His zeal in behalf of purity did not, however, rest here. His mind, crippled with bigotry and superstition, imagined temptations in the most innocent and natural things. He wished to pull out the front teeth of his daughters to prevent coquetry; and he forbade the women on his estates to milk the cows for fear of the evil thoughts that such an employment might suggest. From conscientious scruples he likewise resigned the governorship of several provinces and the important post of Grand Commander of Artillery. Further, as the devil was ever in his thoughts, he fancied he appeared to him in his sleep, and he would wake his wife in the middle of the night to look for evil spirits by the light of flambeaux. He was, in a word, one of those mad people who are just sane enough to keep out of an asylum.