passed, testifying my sentiments of gratitude for that they had been
unwilling to separate until they had seen to the security of my person,
which I had not at all deserved, but such was their good pleasure.  After
this business, which had lasted from six in the morning until seven
o'clock, there was need of rest, seeing that the mind had been agitated
amidst so many incidents, and not a morsel had been tasted."  [_Memoires
de Matthieu Mole,_ t. iii.  p. 265.]

Broussel had taken his seat in the Parliament again.  The Prince of Conde
had just arrived in Paris; he did not like the cardinal, but he was angry
with the Parliament, which he considered imprudent and insolent.  "They
are going ahead," said he:--"if I were to go ahead with them, I should
perhaps do better for my own interests, but my name is Louis de Bourbon,
and I do not wish to shake the throne; these devils of squarecaps, are
they mad about bringing me either to commence a civil war before long, or
to put a rope round their own necks, and place over their heads and over
my own an adventurer from Sicily, who will be the ruin of us all in the
end?  I will let the Parliament plainly see that they are not where they
suppose, and that it would not be a hard matter to bring them to reason."
The coadjutor, to whom he thus expressed himself, answered that "the
cardinal might possibly be mistaken in his measures, and that Paris would
be a hard nut to crack."  Whereupon the prince rejoined, angrily, "It
will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults, but if the
bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week .  .  ."  The coadjutor
took the rest as said.  Some days afterwards, during the night between
the 5th and 6th of January, 1649, the queen, with the little king and the
whole court, set out at four A. M. from Paris for the castle of St.
Germain, empty, unfurnished, as was then the custom in the king's
absence, where the courtiers had great difficulty in finding a bundle of
straw.  "The queen had scarcely a bed to lie upon," says Mdlle. de
Montpensier, "but never did I see any creature so gay as she was that
day; had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased
her hanged, she could not have been more so, and nevertheless she was
very far from all that."

Paris was left to the malcontents; everybody was singing,

"A Fronde-ly wind
Got up to-day,
'Gainst Mazarin
It howls, they say."

On the 8th of January the Parliament of Paris, all the chambers in
assembly, issued a decree whereby Cardinal Mazarin was declared an enemy
to the king and the state, and a disturber of the public peace, and
injunctions were laid upon all subjects of the king to hunt him down; war
was declared.

Scarcely had it begun, when the greatest lords came flocking to the
popular side.  On the departure of the court for St. Germain, the Duchess
of Longueville had remained in Paris; her husband and her brother the
Prince of Conti were not slow in coming to look after her; and already
the Duke of Elbeuf, of the house of Lorraine, had offered his services to
the Parliament.  Levies of troops were beginning in the city, and the
command of the forces was offered to the Prince of Conti; the Dukes of
Bouillon and Beaufort and Marshal de la Mothe likewise embraced the party
of revolt; the Duchesses of Longueville and Bouillon established
themselves with their children at the Hotel de Ville as hostages given by
the Fronde of princes to the Fronde of the people; the Parliaments of Aix
and Rouen made common cause with that of Paris; a decree ordered the
seizure, in all the exchequers of the kingdom, of the royal moneys, in
order that they might be employed for the general defence.  Every evening
Paris wore a festive air; there was dancing at the Hotel de Ville, and
the gentlemen who had been skirmishing during the day around the walls
came for recreation in the society of the princesses.  "This commingling
of blue scarfs, of ladies, of cuirasses, of violins in the hall, and of
trumpets in the square, offered a spectacle which is oftener seen in
romances than elsewhere."  [_Memoires du Cardinal de Retz,_ t. i.]
Affairs of gallantry were mixed up with the most serious resolves; Madame
de Longueville was of the Fronde because she was in love with M. de
Marsillac (afterwards Duke of La Rochefoucauld), and he was on bad terms
with Cardinal Mazarin.

Meanwhile war was rumbling round Paris; the post of Charenton, fortified
by the Frondeurs, had been carried by the Prince of Conde at the head of
the king's troops; the Parliament was beginning to perceive its mistake,
and desired to have peace again, but the great lords engaged in the
contest aspired to turn it to account; they had already caused the gates
of Paris to be closed against a herald sent by the queen to recall her
subjects to their duty; they were awaiting the army of Germany, commanded
by M. de Tnrenne, whom his brother, the Duke of Bouillon, had drawn into
his culpable enterprise; nay, more, they had begun to negotiate with
Spain, and they brought up to the Parliament a pretended envoy from
Archduke Leopold, but the court refused to receive him.  "What! sir,"
said President de Mesmes, turning to the Prince of Conti, "is it possible
that a prince of the blood of France should propose to give a seat upon
the fleurs-de-lis to a deputy from the most cruel enemy of the
fleurs-de-lis?"

The Parliament sent a deputation to the queen, and conferences were
opened at Ruel on the 4th of March;.  the great lords of the Fronde took
no part in it; "they contented themselves with having at St. Germain
low-voiced (a basses notes)--secret agents," says Madame de Motteville,
"commissioned to negotiate in their favor."  Paris was beginning to lack
bread; it was festival-time, and want began to make itself felt; a
"complaint of the Carnival" was current amongst the people:--

"In my extreme affliction, yet
I can this consolation get,
That, at his hands, my enemy,
Old Lent, will fare the same as I:
That, at the times when people eat,
We both shall equal worship meet.
Thus, joining with the whole of France
In war against him _a outrance,_
Grim Lent and festive Carnival,
Will fight against the cardinal."

It was against the cardinal, in fact, that all attacks were directed, but
the queen remained immovable in her fidelity.  "I should be afraid," she
said to Madame de Motteville, "that, if I were to let him fall, the same
thing would happen to me that happened to the King of England (Charles I.
had just been executed), and that, after he had been driven out, my turn
would come."  Grain had found its way into Paris during the truce; and
when, on the 13th of March, the premier president, Molt;, and the other
negotiators, returned to Paris, bringing the peace which they had signed
at Ruel, they were greeted with furious shouts: "None of your peace!
None of your Mazarin!  We must go to St.  Germain to seek our good king!
We must fling into the river all the Mazarins!"  A rioter had just laid
his hand on the premier president's arm.  "When you have killed me," said
the latter, calmly, "I shall only want six feet of earth;" and, when he
was advised to get back into his house by way of the record-offices, "The
court never hides itself," he said; "if I were certain to perish, I would
not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover, would but serve to give
courage to the rioters.  They would, of course, come after me to my house
if they thought that I shrank from them here."  The deputies of the
Parliament were sent back to Ruel, taking a statement of the claims of
the great lords: "according to their memorials, they demanded the whole
of France."  [_Memoires de Madame de Motteville,_ t. iii.  p. 247.]

Whilst Paris was in disorder, and the agitation, through its example, was
spreading over almost the whole of France, M. de Turenne, obliged to fly
from his army, was taking refuge, he and five others, with the landgrave
of Hesse; his troops had refused to follow him in revolt; the last hope
of the Frondeurs was slipping from them.

They found themselves obliged to accept peace, not without obtaining some
favors from the court.

There was a general amnesty; and the Parliament preserved all its rights.
"The king will have the honor of it, and we the profit," said Guy-Patin.
The great lords reappeared one after another at St. Germain.  "It is the
way of our nation to return to their duty with the same airiness with
which they depart from it, and to pass in a single instant from rebellion
to obedience."  [_La Rochefoucauld._]  The return to rebellion was not to
be long delayed.  The queen had gone back to Paris, and the Prince of
Conde with her; he, proud of having beaten the parliamentary Fronde,
affected the conqueror's airs, and the throng of his courtiers, the
"petits maitres," as they were called, spoke very slightingly of the
cardinal.   Conde, reconciled with the Duchess of Longueville, his
sister, and his brother, the Prince of Conti, assumed to have the lion's
share in the government, and claimed all the favors for himself or his
friends; the Fondeurs made skilful use of the ill-humor which this
conduct excited in Cardinal Mazarin; the minister responded to their
advances; the coadjutor was secretly summoned to the Louvre; the dowager
Princess of  Conde felt some apprehensions; but, "What have I to fear?"
her son said to her; "the cardinal is my friend."  "I doubt it," she
answered.  "You are wrong; I rely upon him as much as upon you."  "Please
God you may not be mistaken!" replied the princess, who was setting out
for the Palais-Royal to see the queen, said to be indisposed that day.

Anne of Austria was upon her bed; word was brought to her that the
council was waiting; this was the moment agreed upon; she dismissed the
princess, shut herself up in her oratory with the little king, to whom
she gave an account of what was going to be done for his service; then,
making him kneel down, she joined him in praying to God for the success
of this great enterprise.  As the Prince of  Conde arrived in the grand
gallery, he saw Guitaut, captain of the guards, coming towards him; at
the same instant, through a door at the bottom, out went the cardinal,
taking with him Abbe de la Riviere, who was the usual confidant of the
Duke of Orleans, but from whom his master had concealed the great secret.
The prince supppsed that Guitaut was coming to ask him some favor; the
captain of the guards said in his ear, "My lord, what I want to say is,
that I have orders to arrest you, you, the Prince of Conti your brother,
and M. de Longueville."  "Me, M. Guitaut, arrest me?"  Then, reflecting
for a moment, "In God's name," he said, "go back to the queen and tell
her that I entreat her to let me have speech of her!"  Guitaut went to
her, whilst the prince, returning to those who were waiting for him,
said, "Gentlemen, the queen orders my arrest, and yours too, brother, and
yours too, M. de Longueville; I confess that I am astonished, I who have
always served the king so well, and believed myself secure of the
cardinal's friendship."  The chancellor, who was not in the secret,
declared that it was Guitaut's pleasantry.  "Go and seek the queen then,"
said the prince, "and tell her of the pleasantry that is going on; as for
me, I hold it to be very certain that I am arrested."  The chancellor
went out, and did not return.  M. Servien, who had gone to speak to the
cardinal, likewise did not appear again.  M. de Guitaut entered alone.
"The queen cannot see you, my lord," he said.  "Very well; I am content;
let us obey," answered the prince: "but whither are you going to take us?
I pray you let it be to a warm place."  "We are going to the wood of
Vincennes, my lord," said Guitaut.  The prince turned to the company and
took his leave without uneasiness and with the calmest countenance: as he
was embracing M. de Brienne, secretary of state, he said to him, "Sir, as
I have often received from you marks of your friendship and generosity, I
flatter myself that you will some day tell the king the services I have
rendered him."  The princes went out; and, as they descended the
staircase, Conde leaned towards Comminges, who commanded the detachment
of guards, saying, "Comminges, you are a man of honor and a gentleman;
have I anything to fear?"  Comminges assured him he had not, and that the
orders were merely to escort him to the wood of Vincennes. The carriage
upset on the way; as soon as it was righted, Comminges ordered the driver
to urge on his horses.  The prince burst out laughing.  "Don't be afraid,
Comminges," he said; "there is nobody to come to my assistance; I swear
to you that I had not taken any precautions against this trip."  On
arriving at the castle of Vincennes, there were no beds to be found, and
the three princes passed the night playing at cards; the Princess of
Conde and the dowager princess received orders to retire to their
estates; the Duchess of Longueville, fearing with good cause that she
would be arrested, had taken with all speed the road to Normandy, whither
she went and took refuge at Dieppe, in her husband's government.

The state-stroke had succeeded; Mazarin's skill and prudence once more
check-mated all the intrigues concocted against him; when the news was
told to Chavigny, in spite of all his reasons for bearing malice against
the cardinal, who had driven him from the council and kept him for some
time in prison, he exclaimed, "That is a great misfortune for the prince
and his friends; but the truth must be told: the cardinal has done quite
right; without it he would have been ruined."  The contest was begun
between Mazarin and the great Conde, and it was not with the prince that
the victory was to remain.

Already hostilities were commencing; Mazarin had done everything for the
Frondeurs who remained faithful to him, but the house of Conde was
rallying all its partisans; the Dukes of Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld
had thrown themselves into Bordeaux, which was in revolt against the
royal authority, represented by the Duke of Epernon.  The Princess of
Conde and her young son left Chantilly to join them; Madame de
Longueville occupied Stenay, a strong place belonging to the Prince of
Conde: she had there found Turenne; on the other hand, the queen had just
been through Normandy; all the towns had opened their gates to her; it
was just the same in Burgundy; the Princess of Conde's able agent, Lenet,
could not obtain a declaration from the Parliament of Dijon in her favor.
Bordeaux was the focus of the insurrection; the people, passionately
devoted to "the dukes," as the saying was, were forcing the hand of the
Parliament; riots were frequent in the town; the little king, with the
queen and the cardinal, marched in person upon Bordeaux; one of the
faubourgs was attacked, the dukes negotiated and obtained a general
amnesty, but no mention was made of the princes' release.

The Parliament of Paris took the matter up.  The premier president spoke
in so bitter a tone of the unhappy policy of the minister, that the
little king, feeling hurt, told his mother that, if he had thought it
would not displease her, he would have made the premier president hold
his tongue, and would have dismissed him.  On the 30th of January, Anne
of Austria sent word to the Parliament that she would consent to grant
the release of the princes, "provided that the armaments of Stenay and of
M. de Turenne might be discontinued."  But it was too late; the Duke of
Orleans had made a treaty with the princes.  England served as pretext.
Mazarin compared the Parliament to the House of Commons, and the
coadjutor to Cromwell.  Monsieur took the matter up for his friends, and
was angry.  He openly declared that he would not set foot again in the
Palais-Royal as long as he was liable to meet the cardinal there, and
joined the Parliament in demanding the removal of Mazarin.  The queen
replied that nobody had a right to interfere in the choice of ministers.
By way of answer, the Parliament laid injunctions upon all the officers
of the crown to obey none but the Duke of Orleans, lieutenant general of
the kingdom.  A meeting of the noblesse, at a tumultuous assembly in the
house of the Duke of Nemours, expressed themselves in the same sense.  It
was the 6th of February, 1651: during the night, Cardinal Mazarin set out
for St. Germain; a rumor spread in Paris that the queen was preparing to
follow him with the king; a rush was made to the Palais-Royal: the king
was in his bed.  Next day, Anne of Austria complained to the Parliament.
"The prince is at liberty," said the premier president, "and the king,
the king our master, is a prisoner."  "Monsieur, who felt no fear," says
Retz, "because he had been more cheered in the streets and the hall of
the palace than he had ever been," answered with vivacity, "The king was
a prisoner in the hands of Mazarin; but, thank God, he is not any
longer."  The premier president was right; the king was a prisoner to the
Parisians; patrols of burgesses were moving incessantly round the Palais-
Royal; one night the queen was obliged to let the people into her
chamber; the king was asleep; and two officers of the town-guard watched
for some hours at his pillow.  The yoke of Richelieu and the omnipotence
of Mazarin were less hard for royalty to bear than the capricious and
jealous tyranny of the populace.

The cardinal saw that he was beaten; he made up his mind, and,
anticipating the queen's officers, he hurried to Le Havre to release the
prisoners himself; he entered the castle alone, the governor having
refused entrance to the guards who attended him.  "The prince told me,"
says Mdlle. de Montpensier, "that, when they were dining together,
Cardinal Mazarin was not so much in the humor to laugh as he himself was,
and that he was very much embarrassed.  Liberty to be gone had more
charms for the prince than the cardinal's company.  He said that he felt
marvellous delight at finding himself outside Le Havre, with his sword at
his side; and he might well be pleased to wear it; he is a pretty good
hand at using it.  As he went out he turned to the cardinal and said,
'Farewell, Cardinal Mazarin,' who kissed 'the tip of sleeve' to him."

The cardinal had slowly taken the road to exile, summoning to him his
nieces, Mdlles. Mancini and Martinozzi, whom he had, a short time since,
sent for to court; he crossed from Normandy into Picardy, made some stay
at Doullens, and, impelled by his enemies' hatred, he finally crossed the
frontier on the 12th of March.  The Parliament had just issued orders for
his arrest in any part of France.  On the 6th of April, he fixed his
quarters at Bruhl, a little town belonging to the electorate of Cologne,
in the same territory which had but lately sheltered the last days of
Mary de' Medici.

The Frondeurs, old and new, had gained the day; but even now there was
disorder in their camp.  Conde had returned to the court "like a raging
lion, seeking to devour everybody, and, in revenge for his imprisonment,
to set fire to the four corners of the realm."  [_Memoires de Montglat._]
After a moment's reconciliation with the queen, be began to show himself
more and more haughty towards her in his demands every day; he required
the dismissal of the ministers Le Tellier, Servien, and Lionne, all three
creatures of the cardinal and in correspondence with him at Bruhl; as
Anne of Austria refused, the prince retired to St. Maur; he was already
in negotiation with Spain, being inveigled into treason by the influence
of his sister, Madame de Longueville, who would not leave the Duke of
La Rochefoucauld or return into Normandy to her husband.  Fatal results
of a guilty passion which enlisted against his country the arms of the
hero of Rocroi!  When he returned to Paris, the queen had, in fact,
dismissed her ministers, but she had formed a fresh alliance with the
coadjutor, and, on the 17th of August, in the presence of an assembly
convoked for that purpose at the Palais-Royal, she openly denounced the
intrigues of the prince with Spain, accusing him of being in
correspondence with the archduke.  Next day Conde brought the matter
before the Parliament.  The coadjutor quite expected the struggle, and
had brought supporters; the queen had sent some soldiers; the prince
arrived with a numerous attendance.  On entering, he said to the company,
that he could not sufficiently express his astonishment at the condition
in which he found the palace, which seemed to him more like a camp than a
temple of justice, and that it was not merely that there could be found
in the kingdom people insolent enough to presume to dispute (superiority)
the pavement (disputer le pave) with him.  "I made him a deep obeisance,"
says Retz, "and said that, I very humbly begged his Highness to pardon me
if I told him that I did not believe that there was anybody in the
kingdom insolent enough to dispute the wall (le haut du pave) with him,
but I was persuaded that there were some who could not and ought not, for
their dignity's sake, to yield the pavement (quitter le pave) to any but
the king.  The prince replied that he would make me yield it.  I said
that that would not be easy."  The dispute grew warm; the presidents
flung themselves between the disputants; Conde yielded to their
entreaties, and begged the Duke of La Rochefoucauld to go and tell his
friends to withdraw.  The coadjutor went out to make the same request to
his friends.  "When he would have returned into the usher's little
court," writes Mdlle. de Montpensier, "he met at the door the Duke of La
Rochefoucauld, who shut it in his face, just keeping it ajar to see who
accompanied the coadjutor; he, seeing the door ajar, gave it a good push,
but he could not pass quite through, and remained as it were jammed
between the two folds, unable to get in or out.  The Duke of La
Rochefoucauld had fastened the door with an iron catch, keeping it so to
prevent its opening any wider.  The coadjutor was 'in an ugly position,
for he could not help fearing lest a dagger should pop out and take his
life from behind.  A complaint was made to the grand chamber, and
Champlatreux, son of the premier president, went out, and, by his
authority, had the door opened, in spite of the Duke of La
Rochefoucauld."  The coadjutor protested, and the Duke of Brissac, his
relative, threatened the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; whereupon the latter
said that, if he had them outside, he would strangle them both; to which
the coadjutor replied, "My dear La Franchise (the duke's nickname), do
not act the bully; you are a poltroon and I am a priest; we shall not do
one another much harm."  There was no fighting, and the Parliament,
supported by the Duke of Orleans, obtained from the queen a declaration
of the innocence of the Prince of Conde, and at the same time a formal
disavowal of Mazarin's policy, and a promise never to recall him.  Anne
of Austria yielded everything; the king's majority was approaching, and
she flattered herself that under cover of his name she would be able to
withdraw the concessions which she felt obliged to make as regent.  Her
declaration, nevertheless, deeply wounded Mazarin, who was still taking
refuge at Bruhl, whence he wrote incessantly to the queen, who did not
neglect his counsels.  "Ten times I have taken up my pen to write to
you," he said on the 26th of September, 1651 [_Lettres du Cardinal
Mazarin a la Reine,_ pp. 292, 293], "but could not, and I am so beside
myself at the mortal wound I have just received, that I am not sure
whether anything I could say to you would have rhyme or reason.  The king
and the queen, by an authentic deed, have declared me a traitor, a public
robber, an incapable, and an enemy to the repose of Christendom, after I
had served them with so many signs of my devotion to the advancement of
peace: it is no longer a question of property, repose, or whatever else
there may be of the sort.  I demand the honor which has been taken from
me, and that I be let alone, renouncing very heartily the cardinalate and
the benefices, whereof I send in my resignation joyfully, consenting
willingly to have given up to France twenty-three years of the best of my
life, all my pains and my little of wealth, and merely to withdraw with
the honor which I had when I began to serve her."  The persistent hopes
of the adroit Italian appeared once more in the postscript of the letter:
"I had forgotten to tell you that it was not the way to set me right in
the eyes of the people to impress upon their mind that I am the cause of
all the evils they suffer, and of all the disorders of the realm, in such
sort that my ministry will be held in horror forever."

Conde did not permit himself to be caught by the queen's declarations:
of all the princes he alone was missing at the ceremony of the bed of
justice whereat the youthful Louis XIV., when entering his fourteenth
year, announced, on the 7th of September, to his people that, according
the laws of his realm, he "intended himself to assume the government,
hoping of God's goodness that it would be with piety and justice."  The
prince had retired to Chantilly, on the pretext that the new minister,
the president of the council, Chateauneuf, and the keeper of the seals,
Matthew Mole, were not friends of his.  The Duchess of Longueville at
last carried the day; Conde was resolved upon civil war.  "You would have
it," he said to his sister on repelling the envoy, who had followed him
to Bourges, from the queen and the Duke of Orleans; "remember that I draw
the sword in spite of myself, but I will be the last to sheathe it."  And
he kept his word.

A great disappointment awaited the rebels; they had counted upon the Duke
of Bouillon and M. de Turenne, but neither of them would join the
faction.  The relations between the two great generals had not been
without rubs; Turenne had, moreover, felt some remorse because he, being
a general in the king's army, had but lately declared against the court,
"doing thereby a deed at which Le Balafro and Admiral de Coligny would
have hesitated," says Cardinal de Retz.  The two brothers went, before
long, and offered their services to the queen.

Meanwhile Conde had arrived at Bordeaux: a part of Guienne, Saintonge,
and Porigord had declared in his favor; Count d'Harcourt, at the head of
the royal troops, marched against La Rochelle, which he took from the
revolters under the very beard of the prince, who had come from Bordeaux
to the assistance of the place, whilst the king and the queen, resolutely
quitting Paris, advanced from town to town as far as Poitiers, keeping
the centre of France to its allegiance by their mere presence.  The
treaty of the Prince of Conde with Spain was concluded: eight Spanish
vessels, having money and troops on board, entered the Gironde.  Conde
delivered over to them the castle and harbor of Talmont.  The queen had
commissioned the cardinal to raise levies in Germany, and he had already
entered the country of Liege, embodying troops and forming alliances.  On
the 17th of November, Anne of Austria finally wrote to Mazarin to return
to the king's assistance.  In the presence of Conde's rebellion she had
no more appearances to keep up with anybody; and it was already in the
master's tone that Mazarin wrote to the queen, on the 30th of October, to
put her on her guard against the Duke of Orleans: "The power committed to
his Royal Highness and the neutrality permitted to him, being as he is
wholly devoted to the prince, surrounded by his partisans, and adhering
blindly to their counsels, are matters highly prejudicial to the king's
service, and, for my part, I do not see how one can be a servant of the
king's, with ever so little judgment and knowledge of affairs, and yet
dispute these truths.  The queen, then, must bide her time to remedy all
this."

The cardinal's penetration had not deceived him; the Duke of Orleans was
working away in Paris, where the queen had been obliged to leave him, on
the Prince of Conde's side.  The Parliament had assembled to enregister
against the princes the proclamation of high treason despatched from
Bourges by the court; Gaston demanded that it should be sent back,
threatened as they were, he said, with a still greater danger than the
rebellion of the princes in the return of Mazarin, who was even now
advancing to the frontier; but the premier president took no notice, and
put the proclamation to the vote in these words "It is a great misfortune
when princes of the blood give occasion for such proclamations, but this
is a common and ordinary misfortune in the kingdom, and, for five or six
centuries past, it may be said that they have been the scourges of the
people and the enemies of the monarchy."  The decree passed by a hundred
votes to forty.

On the 24th of December, the cardinal crossed the frontier with a large
body of troops, and was received at Sedan by Lieutenant General Fabert,
faithful to his fortunes even in exile.  The Parliament was furious,
and voted, almost unanimously, that the cardinal and his adherents were
guilty of high treason; ordering the communes to hound him down, and
promising, from the proceeds of his furniture and library which were
about to be sold, a sum of five hundred thousand livres to whoever should
take him dead or alive.  At once began the sale of the magnificent
library which the cardinal had liberally opened to the public.  The
dispersion of the books was happily stopped in time to still leave a
nucleus for the Mazarin Library.

Meanwhile Mazarin had not allowed himself to be frightened by
parliamentary decrees or by dread of assassins.  Re-entering France with
six thousand men, he forced the passage of Pontsur-Yonne, in spite of the
two councillors of the Parliaments who were commissioned to have him
arrested; the Duke of Beaufort, at the head of Monsieur's troops, did not
even attempt to impede his march; and, on the 28th of January, the
cardinal entered Poitiers, at once resuming his place beside the king,
who had come to meet him a league from the town.  The court took
leisurely the road to Paris.

The coadjutor had received the price of his services in the royal cause;
he was a cardinal "sooner," said he, "than Mazarias would have had him;"
and so the new prince of the church considered himself released from any
gratitude to the court, and sought to form a third party, at the head of
which was to be placed the Duke of Orleans as nominal head.  Monsieur,
harried by intrigues in all directions, remained in a state of inaction,
and made a pretension of keeping Paris neutral; his daughter, Mdlle. de
Montpensier, who detested Anne of Austria and Mazarin, and would have
liked to marry the king, had boldly taken the side of the princes; the
court had just arrived at Blois, on the 27th of March, 1652; the keeper
of the seals, Mole, presented himself in front of Orleans to summon the
town to open its gates to the king; at that very moment arrived Mdlle.,
the great Mdlle., as she was then called; and she claimed possession of
Orleans in her father's name.  "It was the appanage of Monsieur; but the
gates were shut and barricaded.  After they had been told that it was I,"
writes Mdlle., "they did not open; and I was there three hours.  The
governor sent me some sweetmeats, and what appeared to me rather funny
was that he gave me to understand that he had no influence.  At the
window of the sentry-box was the Marquis d'Halluys, who watched me
walking up and down by the fosse.  The rampart was fringed with people
who shouted incessantly, 'Hurrah for the king! hurrah for the princes!
None of your Mazarin!'  I could not help calling out to them, 'Go to the
Hotel de Ville and get the gate opened to me!'  The captain made signs
that he had not the keys.  I said to him, 'It must be burst open, and you
owe me more allegiance than to the gentlemen of the town, seeing that I
am your master's daughter.'  The boatmen offered to break open for me a
gate which was close by there.  I told them to make haste, and I mounted
upon a pretty high mound of earth overlooking that gate.  I thought but
little about any nice way of getting thither; I climbed like a cat; I
held on to briers and thorns, and I leapt all the hedges without hurting
myself at all; two boats were brought up to serve me for a bridge, and in
the second was placed a ladder by which I mounted.  The gate was burst at
last.  Two planks had been forced out of the middle; signs were made to
me to advance; and as there was a great deal of mud, a footman took me
up, carried me along, and put me through this hole, through which I had
no sooner passed my head than the drums began beating.  I gave my hand to
the captain, and said to him, "You will be very glad that you can boast
of having managed to get me in."

[Illustration: The Great Mademoiselle----373]

The keeper of the seals was obliged to return to Blois, and Mdlle. kept
Orleans, but without being able to effect an entrance for the troops of
the Dukes of Nemours and Beaufort, who had just tried a surprise against
the court.  Had it not been for the aid of Turenne, who had defended the
bridge of Jargeau, the king might have fallen into the hands of his
revolted subjects.  The queen rested at Gien whilst the princes went on
as far as Montargis, thus cutting off the communications of the court
with Paris.  Turenne was preparing to fall upon his incapable adversaries
when the situation suddenly changed: the, Prince of Conde, weary of the
bad state of his affairs in Guienne, where the veteran soldiers of the
Count of Harcourt had the advantage everywhere over the new levies, had
traversed France in disguise, and forming a junction, on the 1st of
April, with the Dukes of Nemours and Beaufort, threw himself upon the
quarters of Marshal d'Hocquincourt, defeated him, burned his camp, and
drove him back to Bldneau; a rapid march on the part of Turenne, coming
to the aid of his colleague, forced Conde to fall back upon Chatillon;
on the 11th of April he was in Paris.

The princes had relied upon the irritation caused by the return of
Mazarin to draw Paris into the revolt, but they were only half
successful; the Parliament would scarcely give Conde admittance;
President de Bailleul, who occupied the chair in the absence of Mole,
declared that the body always considered it an honor to see the prince in
their midst, but that they would have preferred not to see him there in
the state in which he was at the time, with his hands still bloody from
the defeat of the king's troops.  Amelot, premier president of the Court
of Aids, said to the prince's face, "that it was a matter of
astonishment, after many battles delivered or sustained against his
Majesty's troops, to see him not only returning to Paris without having
obtained letters of amnesty, but still appearing amongst the sovereign
bodies as if he gloried in the spoils of his Majesty's subjects, and
causing the drum to be beaten for levying troops, to be paid by money
coming from Spain, in the capital of the realm, the most loyal city
possessed by the king."  The city of Paris resolved not to make "common
cause or furnish money to assist the princes against the king under
pretext of its being against Mazarin."  The populace alone were favorable
to the princes' party.

Meanwhile Turenne had easy work with the secondary generals remaining at
the head of the factious army; by his able maneeuvres he had covered the
march of the court, which established itself at St. Germain.

Conde assembled his forces encamped around Paris: he intended to fortify
himself at the confluence of the Seine and the Marne, hoping to be
supported by the little army which had just been brought up by Duke
Charles of Lorraine, as capricious and adventurous as ever.  Turenne and
the main body of his troops barred the passage.  Conde threw himself back
upon Faubourg St. Antoine, and there intrenched himself, at the outlet of
the three principal streets which abutted upon Porte St. Antoine (now
Place do la Bastille).  Turenne had meant to wait for re-enforcements and
artillery, but the whole court had flocked upon the heights of Charonne
to see the fight; pressure was put upon him, and the marshal gave the
word to attack.  The army of the Fronde fought with fury.  "I did not see
a Prince of Conde," Turenne used to say; "I saw more than a dozen."  The
king's soldiers had entered the houses, thus turning the barricades;
Marshal Ferte had just arrived with the artillery, and was sweeping Rue
St. Antoine.  The princes' army was about to be driven back to the foot
of the walls of Paris, when the cannon of the Bastille, replying all on a
sudden to the volleys of the royal troops, came like a thunderbolt on M.
de Turenne; the Porte St. Antoine opened, and the Parisians, under arms,
fringing the streets, protected the return of the rebel army.  Mdlle. de
Montpensier had taken the command of the city of Paris.

For a week past the Duke of Orleans had been ill, or pretended to be; he
refused to give any order.  When the prince began his movement, on the 2d
of July, early, he sent to beg Mdlle. not to desert him.  "I ran to the
Luxembourg," she says, "and I found Monsieur at the top of the stairs.
'I thought I should find you in bed,' said I; 'Count Fiesque told me that
you didn't feel well.' He answered, 'I am not ill enough for that, but
enough not to go out.'  I begged him to ride out to the aid of the
prince, or, at any rate, to go to bed and assume to be ill; but I could
get nothing from him.  I went so far as to say, 'Short of having a treaty
with the court in your pocket, I cannot understand how you can take
things so easily; but can you really have one to sacrifice the prince to
Cardinal Mazarin?'  He made no reply: all I said lasted quite an hour,
during which every friend we had might have been killed, and the prince
as well as another, without anybody's caring; nay, there were people of
Monsieur's in high spirits, hoping that the prince would perish; they
were friends of Cardinal de Retz.  At last Monsieur gave me a letter for
the gentlemen of the Hotel, leaving it to me to tell them his intention.
I was there in a moment, assuring those present that, if ill luck would
have it that the enemy should beat the prince, no more quarter would be
shown to Paris than to the men who bore arms.  Marshal de l'Hopital,
governor of Paris for the king, said to me, 'You are aware, Mdlle., that
if your troops had not approached this city, those of the king would not
have come thither, and that they only came to drive them away.'  Madame
de Nemours did not like this, and began to argue the point.  I broke off
their altercation.  'Consider, sir, that, whilst time is being wasted in
discussing useless matters, the prince is in danger in your faubourgs.'"
She carried with her the aid of the Duke of Orleans' troops, and
immediately moved forwards, meeting everywhere on her road her friends
wounded or dying.  "When I was near the gate, I went into the house of an
exchequer-master (maitre des comptes).  As soon as I was there, the
prince came thither to see me; he was in a pitiable state; he had two
fingers' breadth of dust on his face, and his hair all matted; his collar
and his shirt were covered with blood, although he was not wounded; his
breastplate was riddled all over; and he held his sword bare in his hand,
having lost the scabbard.  He said to me, 'You see a man in despair; I
have lost all my friends; MM. de Nemours, de la Rochefoucauld, and
Clinchamps are wounded to death.'  I consoled him a little by telling him
that they were in better case than he supposed.  Then I went off to the
Bastille, where I made them load the cannon which was trained right upon
the city; and I gave orders to fire as soon as I had gone.  I went thence
to the Porte St. Antoine.  The soldiers shouted, 'Let us do something
that will astonish them; our retreat is secure; here is Mdlle. at the
gate, and she will have it opened for us, if we are hard pressed.'  The
prince gave orders to march back into the city; he seemed to me quite
different from what he had been early in the day, though he had not
changed at all; he paid me a thousand compliments and thanks for the
great service he considered that I had rendered him.  I said to him,
'I have a favor to ask of you: that is, not to say anything to Monsieur
about the laches he has displayed towards you.'  At this very moment up
came Monsieur, who embraced the prince with as gay an air as if he had
not left him at all in the lurch.  The prince confessed that he had never
been in so dangerous a position."

The fight at Porte St. Antoine had not sufficiently compromised the
Parisians, who began to demand peace at any price.  The mob, devoted to
the princes, set themselves to insult in the street all those who did not
wear in their hats a tuft of straw, the rallying sign of the faction.  On
the 4th of July, at the general assembly of the city, when the king's
attorney-general proposed to conjure his Majesty to return to Paris
without Cardinal Mazarin, the princes, who demanded the union of the
Parisians with themselves, rose up and went out, leaving the assembly to
the tender mercies of the crowd assembled on the Place de Greve.  "Down
on the Mazarins!" was the cry; "there are none but Mazarins any longer at
the Hotel de Ville!"  Fire was applied to the doors defended by the
archers; all the outlets were guarded by men beside themselves; more than
thirty burgesses of note were massacred; many died of their wounds, the
Hotel de Ville was pillaged, Marshal de l'Hopital escaped with great
difficulty, and the provost of tradesmen yielded up his office to
Councillor Broussel.  Terror reigned in Paris: it was necessary to drag
the magistrates to the Palace of Justice to decree, on the 19th of July,
by seventy-four votes against sixty-nine, that the Duke of Orleans should
be appointed "lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and the Prince of Conde
commandant of all the armies."  The usurpation of the royal authority was
flagrant, the city-assembly voted subsidies, and Paris wrote to all the
good towns of France to announce to them her resolution.  Chancellor
Seguier had the poltroonery to accept the presidency of the council,
offered him by the Duke of Orleans; he thus avenged himself for the
preference the, queen had but lately shown for Mole by confiding the
seals to him.  At the same time the Spaniards were entering France; for
all the strong places were dismantled or disgarrisoned.  The king,
obliged to confront civil war, had abandoned his frontiers; Gravelines
had fallen on the 18th of May, and the arch-duke had undertaken the siege
of Dunkerque.  At Conde's instance, he detached a body of troops, which
he sent, under the orders of Count Fuendalsagna, to join the Duke of
Lorraine, who had again approached Paris.  Everywhere the fortune of arms
appeared to be against the king.  "This year we lost Barcelona,
Catalonia, and Casale, the key of Italy," says Cardinal de Retz.  We saw
Brisach in revolt, on the point of falling once more into the hands of
the house of Austria.  We saw the flags and standards of Spain fluttering
on the Pont Neuf, the yellow scarfs of Lorraine appeared in Paris as
freely as the isabels and the blues."  Dissension, ambition, and
poltroonery were delivering France over to the foreigner.

The evil passions of men, under the control of God, help sometimes to
destroy and sometimes to preserve them.  The interests of the Spaniards
and of the Prince of Conde were not identical.  He desired to become the
master of France, and to command in the king's name; the enemy were
laboring to humiliate France and to prolong the war indefinitely: The
arch-duke recalled Count Fuendalsagna to Dunkerque; and Turenne,
withstanding the terrors of the court, which would fain have fled first
into Normandy and then to Lyons, prevailed upon the queen to establish
herself at Pontoise, whilst the army occupied Compiegne.  At every point
cutting off the passage of the Duke of Lorraine, who had been re-enforced
by a body of Spaniards, Turenne held the enemy in check for three weeks,
and prevented them from marching on Paris.  All parties began to tire of
hostilities.

Cardinal Mazarin took his line, and loudly demanded of the king
permission to withdraw, in order, by his departure, to restore peace to
the kingdom.  The queen refused.  "There is no consideration shown," she
said, "for my son's honor and my own; we will not suffer him to go away."
But the cardinal insisted.  Prudent and far-sighted as he was, he knew
that to depart was the only way of remaining.  He departed on the 19th of
August, but without leaving the frontier: he took up his quarters at
Bouillon.  The queen had summoned the Parliament to her at Pontoise.  A
small number of magistrates responded to her summons, enough, however, to
give the queen the right to proclaim rebellious the Parliament remaining
at Paris.  Chancellor Srguier made his escape, in order to go and rejoin
the court.  Nobody really believed in the cardinal's withdrawal; men are
fond of yielding to appear ances in order to excuse in their own eyes a
change in their own purposes.  Disorder went on increasing in Paris; the
great lords, in their discontent, were quarrelling one with another; the
Prince of Conde struck M. de Rieux, who returned the blow; the Duke of
Nemours was killed in a duel by M. de Beaufort; the burgesses were
growing weary of so much anarchy; a public display of feeling in favor
of peace took place on the 24th of September in the garden of the
Palais-Royal; those present stuck in their hats pieces of white paper in
opposition to the Frondeurs' tufts of straw.  People fought in the
streets on behalf of these tokens. For some weeks past Cardinal de Retz
had remained inactive, and his friends pressed him to move.  "You see
quite well," they said, "that Mazarin is but a sort of jack-in-the-box,
out of sight to-day and popping up to-morrow; but you also see that,
whether he be in or out, the spring that sends him up or down is that of
the royal authority, the which will not, apparently, be so very soon
broken by the means taken to break it.  The obligation you are under
towards Monsieur, and even towards the public, as regards Mazarin, does
not allow you to work for his restoration; he is no longer here, and,
though his absence may be nothing but a mockery and a delusion, it
nevertheless gives you an opportunity for taking certain steps which
naturally lead to that which is for your good."  Retz lost no time in
going to Compiegne, where the king had installed himself after Mazarin's
departure; he took with him a deputation of the clergy, and received in
due form the cardinal's hat.  He was the bearer of proposals for an
accommodation from the Duke of Orleans, but the queen cut him short.  The
court perceived its strength, and the instructions of Cardinal Mazarin
were precise.  The ruin of De Retz was from that moment resolved upon.

The Prince of Conde was ill; he had left the command of his troops to M.
do Tavannes; during the night between the 5th and 6th of October, Turenne
struck his camp at Villeneuve St. Georges, crossed the Seine at Corbeil,
the Marne at Meaux, without its being in the enemy's power to stop him,
and established himself in the neighborhood of Dammartin.  Conde was
furious.  "Tavannes and Vallon ought to wear bridles," he said; "they are
asses;" he left his house, and placed himself once more at the head of
his army, at first following after Turenne, and soon to sever himself
completely from that Paris which was slipping away from him.  "He would
find himself more at home at the head of four squadrons in the Ardennes
than commanding a dozen millions of such fellows as we have here, without
excepting President Charton," said the Duke of Orleans.  "The prince was
wasting away with sheer disgust; he was so weary of hearing all the talk
about Parliament, court of aids, chambers in assembly, and Hotel de
Ville, that he would often declare that his grandfather had never been
more fatigued by the parsons of La Rochelle."  The great Conde was
athirst for the thrilling emotions of war; and the crime he committed was
to indulge at any price that boundless passion.  Ever victorious at the
head of French armies, he was about to make experience of defeat in the
service of the foreigner.

The king had proclaimed a general amnesty on the 18th of October; and on
the 21st he set out in state for Paris.  The Duke of Orleans still
wavered.  "You wanted peace," said Madame, "when it depended but on you
to make war; you now want war when you can make neither war nor peace.
It is of no use to think any longer of anything but going with a good
grace to meet the king."  At these words he exclaimed aloud, as if it had
been proposed to him to go and throw himself in the river.  "And where
the devil should I go?"  he answered.  He remained at the Luxembourg.  On
drawing near Paris, the king sent word to his uncle that he would have to
leave the city.  Gaston replied in the following letter:--

"MONSEIGNEUR: Having understood from my cousin the Duke of Danville
and from Sieur d'Aligre, the respect that your Majesty would have me
pay you, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to allow me to assure
you by these lines that I do not propose to remain in Paris longer
than tillto-morrow; and that I will go my way to my house at
Limours, having no more passionate desire than to testify by my
perfect obedience that I am, with submission,

"Monseigneur,
"Your most humble and most obedient servant and subject,