Five little girls and a little boy, perfectly beautiful children, according to all accounts, on receipt of this invitation were got ready as soon as possible, and sent off to the Palais Mazarin in Paris, where they had a king and his brother for playmates. Few children ever had more splendid advantages--certainly no children in that day--and none ever benefited less by them. Perhaps it was not altogether their fault, for though affectionate and intelligent they were afflicted with an incurable spiritual infirmity. The Mancinis altogether lacked the moral sense. Furthermore, the system of education to which they were subjected, with its espionage and inducements to deceit, coupled with the demoralising mixture of indulgence and severity with which their uncle treated them, was anything but calculated to correct the faults of nature. These quick-witted, wilful children were, as retribution for his sins, said his enemies, constantly dashing the hopes and outraging the feelings of their uncle, whose life within the splendid walls of the Palais Mazarin they caused to resemble that Fronde with which he had battled so desperately in the State.
"At least," he used to plead when they objected to hearing Mass, "if you don't hear it for God's sake, hear it for the world's."
But the Mancinis never showed the slightest aptitude for learning lessons in hypocritical respectability; vice with them was ever naked and unashamed.
The Cardinal had intended, as was but natural, to leave his immense fortune and his name, which he desired to perpetuate, to his nephew, Philip, on whom he had already bestowed the title of Duc de Nevers. But this young man, who had as little brains as he afterwards lacked importance, took it into his head one Good Friday to celebrate Mass over a pig, an enormity that cost him Mazarin's name and fortune. In other respects the Duc de Nevers was a harmless nonentity and turned out well--for a Mancini. He seems to have spent the greater part of his useless life in composing doggerel verses which he addressed to his sisters. The names of these celebrated beauties were Laure, Olympe, Marie, Hortense, and Marie Anne. The Cardinal married the first to the grandson of the "Charmante Gabrielle" and Henri IV., by whom she had a son destined fifty years later to win renown in the Marlborough Wars as the Duc de Vendôme, a man whose memory Saint-Simon has preserved for us in vitriol. Laure was the only one of Mazarin's nieces on whom there is no slur. She died young.