ST. EVREMOND.
Né en 1613.
Mort en 1703.
To face page 112.
No mere demagogue was Masaniello; but a man of noble patriotic aspiration, victim of his own passionate ardour for a great cause. Perhaps as a soldier he would have risen to highest rank and glory; but Masaniello would be no soldier for Spain, and in this resolution he had been strengthened, if that were needed, by Salvator Rosa, the painter, who was one of his friends, and by the Duc de Guise, who swore to avenge the death of Masaniello, and kept his word.
Not content with her Neapolitan bodice and skirt, Ninon attired herself in a fisherman’s garb, with the object of mingling in the fray of the Neapolitan uprising, and she witnessed the sharp, swift close of Masaniello’s little day of triumph. But she left Naples almost immediately after, experiencing various adventures of a sort which she found sufficiently agreeable to detain her still some five or six months from Paris, meeting on her way old friends and new, among them her agreeable acquaintance, the Chevalier Orondate, who was bound for Naples, as legate of Mazarin, who was anxious for acquaintance with every detail of the revolt. There was little Ninon could not tell him of this. She had been a close and intelligent observer. It was more likely that Orondate could get accurate information from one who had witnessed the whole émeute, than any gathering up of particulars, now comparative tranquillity had been restored in the city. Therefore the Chevalier did not go on to Naples, but paired off with Ninon for a while into a studious seclusion at Lyons, during which she furnished him with a vivid narrative of the disturbance itself, and of the manner in which the people had been relieved of their cruel burden. It contained the elements of a good object-lesson for Mazarin and for the Court party, now engaged in bitter contention with the Parliament, for the storm of the Fronde had broken.
CHAPTER X
The Fronde and Mazarin—A Brittany Manor—Borrowed Locks—The Flight to St Germains—A Gouty Duke—Across the Channel—The Evil Genius—The Scaffold at Whitehall—Starving in the Louvre—The Mazarinade—Poverty—Condé’s Indignation—The Cannon of the Bastille—The Young King.