THE STORIES OF NOTED PAINTINGS. 275 



. THE TEMPTATATION OF ST. ANTHONY. 



By ALEXANDER L. LELOIR, French, recently died. About 300 

 years after Christ there came out of the Egyptian deserts an old 

 Hermit of 50 years or more, who told the most marvelous 

 stories of his conflicts with Satan in the wilderness ; how the old 

 arch enemy had taken him on every weak side of humanity, and 

 tempted and tortured him with perfectly diabolical ingenuity. 

 On reading the story, one would say that the Devil must have 

 spent pretty much all his time for 30 odd years in devising and 

 practicing torments on this poor recluse. But St. Anthony lived 

 50 years longer, and paid the "old fellow" back, in good solid 

 preaching, for all the fleshly vexations that had been practiced 

 on him. 



THE BIRTH OF LOUIS XIV, in 1638. 



By JAQUES LEMAN. " A few days after the birth of the 

 dauphin, the great dignitaries and gentlemen of the King's 

 household were admitted to the Queen's room, to pay homage to 

 the new-born heir of the crown of France." 



It is a great undertaking to go back 240 years in the annals of 

 a country and reproduce a court scene, with all the costumes and 

 splendor of the times and with accurate portraits of the distin- 

 guished actors. Yet this is the work here presented, and as such 

 it is a splendid and wonderful success. The central and most 

 important figure, though a small one, is the infant son of Louis 

 XIII and Anne of Austria, born in 1638, and twenty-three years 

 after the marriage of his parents. He was made King of France 

 when only five years old, and for the greater part of the seventy- 

 two years of his reign he filled the role of the grandest monarch 

 of Europe. The precocious babe in the picture seems already to 

 realize that he is a late comer, and cannot waste any of his prec- 

 ious time in babyhood. 



The beautiful mother and the happy king will be at once 

 recognized. On the right, and attended by Cardinal de Retz 

 or Father Joseph as he preferred to be called is the great 

 Cardinal Duke de Richelieu, Grand Chancellor of the Empire, 

 and at this time, without doubt, the foremost man in Europe. 



