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.
* * * * *
"GOD SAVE THE KING" IN ITALY.
On the 26th of December last, the King and Queen of Sardinia went
in state to the _Carlo Felice_ Theatre at Genoa, and presented to
the public, says an Italian correspondent, his niece, the betrothed
bride of the heir-apparent of the house of Austria.
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