124

mSTOKY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XI.

ICS!).

slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg.No respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to monasteries,to infirmaries, to beautiful works of art, to monuments of theillustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the Elector Palatinewas turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital wassacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on w'hichthe sick lay were destroyed. The very stones of wdiich Manheimhad been built rvere flung into the Rhine. The magnificentCathedral of Spues perished, and with it the marble sepulchresof eight Ccesars. The coffins were broken open. The asheswere scattered to the winds.* Treves, with its fair bridge, itsRoman amphitheatre, its venerable churches, convents, andcolleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this lastcrime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a bettermind by the execrations of all the neighbouring nations, bythe silence and confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostu-lations of his wife. He had been more than two years secretlymarried to Frances de Maintenon, the governess of his naturalchildren. It would be hard to name any woman w T ho, with solittle romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Herearly years had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her firsthusband had supported himself by writing burlesque farces andpoems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, shecould no longer boast of youth or beauty: but she possessed inan extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which menof sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a lifeof business and care, prize most highly in a female companion.Her character was such as has been well compared to that soft

* For the history of the devastation of the Palatinate, see the Memoirsof La Fare, Dangeau, Maduine de la Fayette, Villars, and Saint Simon, andthe Monthly Mercuries for March and April 1689. The pamphlets andbroadsides arc too numerous to quote. ^One broadside, entitled “A trueAccount of the barbarous Cruelties committed by the French in thePalatinate in January and February last,” is perhaps the most remarkable.