The book by Kondraty Birkin (P.P. Karataev), an almost forgotten Russian writer, offers readers a rare opportunity to feel the atmosphere of palace secrets, intrigues and scandals in Russia, England, Italy, France and other states in the period of the 16th–18th centuries. in the biographical sketch of Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland, we talked about the harmful influence on the character of a man of his upbringing in a circle of women; Now, starting the biography of Louis XIV, we have to repeat the same thing. The grandson of a Florentine and the son of a Spanish woman, Louis was gifted with an ardent, passionate, indomitable nature. He was given into the care of his tutor Perefix, the Bishop of Rhodes (later the Archbishop of Paris), already in his adolescence, when many bad qualities - ineradicable - were instilled into his heart.