“The Cardinal smiled sourly, the Queen flew into a rage.... ‘There is a revolt even in the intention to revolt,’ she said. ‘These are the stories of people who desire revolt.’ The Cardinal, who saw in my face what I thought of such talk, put in a word, and in a soft voice replied to the Queen: ‘Would to God, madame, that all the world spoke with the same sincerity as M. le Coadjuteur. He fears for his flock, for the city, for your Majesty’s authority. I am persuaded that the danger is not so great as he believes; but scruple in such a matter is worthy of his religion.’ The Queen, understanding this jargon, immediately altered her tone, talked civilly, and was answered by me with great respect, and a face so smug that La Rivière whispered to Bautru, ... ‘See what it is not to spend day and night in a place like this. The Coadjutor is a man of the world. He knows what he is about, and takes what she says for what it is worth.’”
The whole scene, he says, was comedy. “I played the innocent, which I by no means was; the Cardinal the confident, though he had no confidence at all. The Queen pretended to drop honey though she had never been more choked with gall.” But what comedy there was was not there very long. The Queen, who had declared that she would strangle Broussel with her own hands sooner than release him, was to change her mind. La Meilleraye and Retz were sent out again to report, and La Meilleraye, losing his head, nearly lost his life. At the head of his cavalry, he pushed out into the crowd, “sword in hand, crying with all his might, ‘Vive le Roi! Broussel au large!’” More people, naturally, saw him than could hear what he said. His sword had an offensive look; there was a cry to arms, and other swords were out besides his. The Maréchal killed a man with a pistol-shot, the crowd closed in upon him; he was saved by Retz, who himself escaped by the use of his wits. An apothecary’s apprentice, he says, put a musket at his head.
“Although I did not know him from Adam, I thought it better not to let him know that. On the contrary, ‘Ah, my poor lad,’ I said, ‘if your father were to see this!’ He thought that I had been his father’s best friend, though in fact I had never seen his father, and asked me if I was the Coadjutor. When he understood that I was, he cried out, ‘Vive le Coadjuteur!’ and they all came crowding round me with the same cry.”
La Meilleraye knew very well what he had done. He said to Retz, “I am a fool, a brute—I have nearly ruined the State, and it is you that have saved it. Come, we will talk to the Queen like Frenchmen and men of worth.” So they did, but to no purpose. She believed that Retz was at the bottom of the whole émeute, and was not far wrong. But there was no stopping it now. The barricades were up at dawn the next morning, and it was clear that Broussel must be given back. He was. Then came the flight of the Court, which Dumas tells so admirably.
After the evasion of the royalties, the Fronde became largely comic opera. Certain of the princes—for reasons of their own—joined the popular party: Beaufort, le roi des Halles, who wanted the Admiralty; Bouillon, with claims upon his principality of Sedan; Conti, Elbeuf, Longueville. Retz had the idea of bringing their, and his, ladies into it. He himself fetched Mesdames de Longueville and de Bouillon with their children to the Hôtel de Ville, “avec une espèce de triomphe.”
“The small-pox had spared Mme. de Longueville all her astounding beauty; Mme. de Bouillon’s, though on the wane, was still remarkable. Now imagine, I beg you, those two upon the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, the handsomer in that they appeared to be in undress, though they were not at all so. Each held one of her children in her arms, as lovely as its mother. The Grève was full of people over the roofs of the houses. The men shouted their joy, the women wept for pity. I threw five hundred pistoles out of the window of the Hôtel de Ville.”
After their debonair fashion these high people played at revolution. “Then you might see the blue scarves of ladies mingling with steel cuirasses, hear violins in the halls of the Hôtel de Ville, and drums and trumpets in the Place—the sort of thing which you find more of in romance than elsewhere.” Nothing came of it all; a peace was patched up with the Parlement, and each of the grandees got something for himself, which had been his only reason for levying civil war. Beaufort was assured of his Admiralty, Longueville was made Viceroy of Normandy, Bouillon compensated for Sedan—and so on. La Rochefoucauld, too, who had taken up arms for the sake of Mme. de Longueville—
“Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux,
J’ai fait la guerre aux rois; je l’aurais fait aux dieux”—
we must suppose that he also was rewarded. There is an interesting page in the Memoirs of André d’Ormesson, one of an upright family of lawyers, which by stating the mere facts lets in the light upon the Fronde. All he does is to draw up a list of the grands seigneurs of 1648-55, with a statement of how often they changed sides in the seven years. It should be studied by all who wish to know how not to make civil war. But Retz too gives the spirit of the thing equally well. When his quarrel with Condé was coming to a head, and he was preparing, as he threatened, to push that prince off the pavement, he collected his friends about him, and among them two light-hearted marquises, Rouillac and Canillac. But when Canillac saw Rouillac he said to Retz, “I came to you, sir, to assure you of my services; but it is not reasonable that the two greatest asses in the kingdom should be on the same side. So I am off to the Hôtel de Condé.” And, he adds, you are to observe that he went there!