"Get up, monsieur," said he, "Condé has sent to announce his arrival."
"Condé," I growled sleepily. "Where? What do you mean? What is all the noise outside?"
"The town has gone mad with fright—that is all. Monsieur must be quick in dressing."
In a few minutes I was dressed and out of the house. Pillot was right—the town certainly had gone mad. The street was packed with people surging this way and that, pushing, struggling, and asking questions. There were hundreds of rumours in the air: Condé had crept into Gien, and had hanged Mazarin in his own room. The Queen-Mother was a prisoner with her two sons, and all her Guards had died fighting. I had hardly witnessed such a tumult even in Paris. Couriers and lackeys, coachmen and grooms; soldiers, citizens, peasants, and ladies of the Court, were all grouped together, making the oddest spectacle. No one really knew what had happened, though a hundred people were willing to tell.
I would have gone straight to the Cardinal's quarters, but such a course was out of the question; so, following Pillot, I found myself on a piece of high ground to the left of the town.
"Ah!" said I, drawing a deep breath, "now it is plain what has occurred. You are right, Pillot, that is a message from Condé, sure enough!"
The night was dark, but far away in the distance the gloom was lit up by numerous tongues of fire that extended for miles. Now one died away, but the next minute a fresh one shot skyward, and in places several merged together in one broad flame.
"Condé is amusing himself and providing us with a fine spectacle," said Pillot. "It seems to me that the prince has lost neither his cunning nor his boldness. Turenne is a good soldier, but it looks as if Condé were a better."
"Turenne is not over there. Condé has fallen on General Hocquincourt, and things will be serious for the Marshal."
"And for the Cardinal," laughed Pillot, who never saw any good in Mazarin; "he must run, monsieur, and fast, too."