(It was afterwards said that the man was a pick-lock, but we always suspected that the Coadjutor had made the worst of him by way of enhancing a good story.)
Just as the absolution was finished, some more of the mob came up, and one threw a stone which hit the Archbishop on the cheek, and another pointed a musket at him. ‘Unhappy man,’ he cried, ‘if your father saw you!’ This seemed to touch the man; he cried: ‘Vive le Coadjuteur!’ And so easily were the people swayed, that they all began to applaud him to the skies, and he led them off to the market-place.
‘We thought ourselves rid of them,’ said my mother, ‘we began to breathe again, and I was coming home, but, bah! No such thing! They are all coming back, thirty or forty thousand of them, only without their weapons. At least the gentlemen said so, but I am sure they had them hidden. Up comes M. Le Coadjuteur again, the Marshal de Meileraye leading him by the hand up the Queen, and saying: ‘Here, Madame, is one to whom I owe my life, but to whom your Majesty owes the safety of the State, nay, perhaps of the palace.‘’
The Queen smiled, seeing through it all, said my mother, and the Coadjutor broke in: ‘The matter is not myself, Madame, it is Paris, now disarmed and submissive, at your Majesty’s feet.’
‘It is very guilty, and far from submissive,’ said the Queen angrily; ‘pray, if it were so furious, how can it have been so rapidly tamed?’ And then M. de Meilleraye must needs break in furiously: ‘Madame, an honest man cannot dissemble the state of things. If Broussel is not set at liberty, tomorrow there will not be one stone upon another at Paris.’
But the Queen was firm, and put them both down, only saying: ‘Go and rest, Monsieur, you have worked hard.’
‘Was that all the thanks he had?’ exclaimed Annora.
‘Of course it was, child. The Queen and Cardinal knew very well that the tumult was his work; or at least immensely exaggerated by him, just to terrify her into releasing that factious old mischief-maker! Why, he went off I know not where, haranguing them from the top of his carriage!’
‘Ah! that was where we saw him,’ said Nan. ‘Madame, indeed there was nothing exaggerated in the tumult. It was frightful. They made ten times the noise our honest folk do in England, and did ten times less. If they had been English, M. Broussel would be safe at home now!’
‘No the tumult was not over-painted, that I can testify,’ said my brother.