This is the third of four books about the adventures of Giulio Mazarini. It covers the period from approximately 1627 to 1639, the most productive time in Mazarini's career. He tries hard to achieve one important goal: to restore peace in Western Europe. The peace was violated by Spain and Savoy which attacked the small marquesate of Montferrat in northern Italy. Mazarini manipulates the Spanish commander into inaction. By doing so, Mazarini happens to fulfill the agenda of Richelieu thus defending the interests of France. Richelieu appreciates his efforts. After a short period of happiness when Mazarini falls in love with a woman he saved from death, his fortunes take a turn for the worse. The young diplomat loses the favor of the Pope, who does not approve of Mazarini's leanings toward Richelieu's policies. As a result Mazarini has to flee Italy and goes to France.

Book Description Pope's diplomat. As a protege of Constable Colonna he receives the rank of captain and is sent to the town of Ancona with a secret mission to expose and neutralize a Spanish spy ring acting in the army. After many dangerous adventures he manages to fulfill this task but faces the wrath of the Spaniards who are formally the Pope's allies. Through his ingenuity and resourcefulness he finds a way to allay the Vatican's fears of the Spaniards, survives the Spanish threats, and even defeats them diplomatically.

Mazarini was struck by the change in the cardinal's appearance since he last saw him three years ago.

In the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all. . . . His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books

The memoirs of Hortense (1646–1699) and of Marie (1639–1715) Mancini, nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin and members of the court of Louis XIV, represent the earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. Both unhappily married—Marie had also fled the aftermath of her failed affair with the king—the sisters chose to leave their husbands for life on the road, a life quite rare for women of their day. Through their writings, the Mancinis sought to rehabilitate their reputations and reclaim the right to define their public images themselves, rather than leave the stories of their lives to the intrigues of the court—and to their disgruntled ex-husbands. First translated in 1676 and 1678 and credited largely to male redactors, the two memoirs reemerge here in an accessible English translation that chronicles the beginnings of women’s rights to personal independence within the confines of an otherwise circumscribed early modern aristocratic society.