CARDINAL MAZARIN.

The pecuniary wealth, the valuables and pictures of Mazarin, were
immense. He was fond of hoarding,--a passion that seized him when he
first found himself banished and destitute. His love of pictures was as
strong as his love of power--stronger, since it survived. A fatal malady
had seized on the cardinal, whilst engaged in the conferences of the
treaty, and worn by mental fatigue. He brought it home with him to the
Louvre. He consulted Guenaud, the great physician, who told him that he
had two months to live. Some days after receiving this dread mandate,
Brienne perceived the cardinal in night-cap and dressing gown tottering
along his gallery, pointing to his pictures, and exclaiming, "Must I
quit all these?" He saw Brienne, and seized him: "Look," exclaimed he,
"look at that Correggio! this Venus of Titian! that incomparable Deluge
of Caracci! Ah! my friend, I must quit all these. Farewell, dear
pictures, that I loved so dearly, and that cost me so much!" His friend
surprised him slumbering in his chair at another time, and murmuring,
"Gueriaud has said it! Guenaud has said it!" A few days before his
death, he caused himself to be dressed, shaved, rouged and painted,
"so that he never looked so fresh and vermilion," in his life. In this
state he was carried in his chair to the promenade, where the envious
courtiers cruelly rallied, and paid him ironical compliments on his
appearance. Cards were the amusement of his death-bed, his hand being
held by others; and they were only interrupted by the visit of the Papal
Nuncio, who came to give the cardinal that plenary indulgence to which
the prelates of the sacred college are officially entitled. Mazarin
expired on the 9th of March, 1661.

_Lardner's Cyclopaedia_, vol. xv.