Parliament continued to send deputies to Saint Germain, but the Queen was obdurate. All business was suspended; people slept in their clothes; the bourgeois hid their money. The courtiers, who had remained in their palaces, hurried away followed by their furniture; and the evil faces which appear in Paris on the eve of a revolution were seen all over the city. The wains carrying the courtiers' furniture were pillaged, and the pillagers sacked the bakeries. Parliament had seized the reins of State, but the Parliamentary sessions resembled the stormy meetings of the existing Chamber. Personal interests and the interests of the coteries had entered politics. After a deplorable day in Parliament Olivier d'Ormesson noted sadly in his journal: "The public welfare is now used only as a pretext for avenging private wrongs."
Mademoiselle's feelings in regard to the events of the day were varied; they could not be wholly pleasant, for there was nothing in the revolt of the people to tempt the imagination of a personage fully convinced that the King was the deputy of God. The first Fronde was an outburst of despair provoked by an excess of public anguish. Yet Mademoiselle considered it the adventure of a party of agitators. The preceding century France had been an exceedingly rich country. Under Richelieu Monsieur had depicted it in a state of famine, and in the early days of the Regency, and later, when foreign nations were lauding Mazarin's diplomacy, the people of Paris were perishing from every form of squalid misery. The State paid out its moneys without counting them, lent at usurious interest, and gave the notes of its creditors to its note-holders, the bankers; the note-holders fell upon the debtors like brigands; the taxes were collected by armed men. Wherever the tax-gatherer had passed the land was bare, cattle, tools, carts, household furniture, and all the personal property of the victims of the State had been seized; the farmers had nothing to eat, nothing to sleep on, no shelter; they were homeless and hopeless; they had but one alternative: to go out upon the highways, and, in their turn, force a living from the passers-by at the point of the knife. Through the brigandage of the note-holders every year added a strip of abandoned ground to the waste lands of France.
The nation had turned honest men into thieves and pariahs.
Barillon raised his voice and the grave opened to receive him. Broussel was saved, but his salvation precipitated the catastrophe. The Queen had fled, abducting the King. The national Treasury was empty; affairs were desperate, and Parliament, its honour menaced, decided upon a measure which, had it been successfully effected, would have changed the course of French history.
England had inaugurated a successful political method by giving the nation a Constitution, and by introducing in France the orderly system with which the House of Commons had endowed England. With that end in view the magistrates and all the officials, who had paid for their offices, tried to seize the legislative and financial power of the State. They thought that by that means they could bring the royal authority to terms, and make the national Government an honest executive and guardian of the people's rights,—in the words of the reformers, "make it what it should be, to reign as it ought to reign."[129]
The nation, individually, approved the Parliamentary initiative. Each citizen, courtier, or man of the lower order urged on the scheme. Some applauded because they wished for the good of France. Others looked forward to "fishing in troubled waters." All knew that a great deal of business could be done under cover of the excitement attendant upon national disturbances. They who had no need of money and no thought of financial speculation hoped that their personal schemes might be advanced by a national crisis. Mademoiselle was of the latter class. She had decided to unite her acres and her millions with the fortunes of the King of France. Louis XIV. was ten years old. Anne-Marie-Louise was one and twenty, and she looked her age; her beauty was of the robust type which, mildly speaking, is not of a character to make a woman look younger than her years. Her manners were easy and assured. To the child who had so recently been dandled upon her knee the tall cousin was neither more nor less than the dreaded though respectable daughter of his uncle; the young King shrank from her. Mademoiselle suspected that he feared rather than loved her, and although her flatterers had told her that age was not an obstacle among people of her rank,[130] she was troubled by a presentiment that she should not be able to capture that particular husband unless she could carry him off by force; the thought unhinged all her political convictions; but the enterprises of Parliament gave promise of utility. Her memoirs show that she studied the situation from every point of view, and that a conflict raged within her breast. At times she believed that a public disturbance would be favourable to her interests; at other times she was worried by the thought of the inconveniences attendant upon war. One day she approved the designs of Parliament; the next day she indignantly denounced the subjects who had attempted to circumscribe the authority of the King. She adapted to the royal situation all the maxims derived from the "Divine Right," yet she rejoiced at all the errors of the Court.
She had errors in plenty to sustain her courage; the situation was so false that anything but error would have been impossible. Married or not married, Anne of Austria allowed herself a dangerous latitude; Mazarin did not protect her, she protected and defended him; to her mind all that he did was charming; she glanced knowingly at her courtiers if he opened his mouth or if he moved his hand. Her eyes beamed upon him with familiar meaning, and while he talked her arch smiles asked the Court if her Chief of Council was not a prince among men and the flower of ministers. She would have been happy in a hovel had she been able to fix him stably among his precious ancient draperies and the thousands of rare objects with which he had surrounded his handsome form. Mazarin had feathered his nest à l'Italien, and the style was by far too superfine for the times and for the taste of France. The gossips of the royal domestic offices had circulated the intimate details of the royal life. The public knew all about the favourite; they knew what he wore, what he ate, and what he did; and they thought of him as always at play with small, strangely rare animals, as graceful, as handsome, and as highly perfumed as their master. In imagination they saw Mazarin steeped in sloth, battening on the public funds, and nourishing his soft beauty by the aid of secrets of the toilet of his own invention. Anne of Austria did not care what the people thought. She delighted in Mazarin. She was happy because she had been able to lay the nation at his feet. The people said that she had laid them under his feet, and they declared with curses that it should not be.
Mazarin had rendered France incalculable services, but no one thanked him or did him justice. No one understood the work that he had accomplished. Paris knew nothing of foreign affairs. The people's minds were engrossed by the local misery, and so little interest was taken in politics that when the Peace of Westphalia was signed no one in France noticed it although the world classed it among great historical events.[131]
Paris knew more of the King's scullions than of Mazarin's diplomacy. The King's cousin: Mademoiselle la Princesse Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans,—fit bride for any king! must remain upon the stocks to pleasure "the Queen's thief."
The King, also, was the victim of the foreigner.