"Ah! sighed Darpent, "it would be well if only, through child lips or any others, the King and his mother could learn that the Parliament can heartily rejoice in all that is for the true glory and honour in justice and in the well-being of her people, and that we love above all!"
"There," said I, glad to turn the conversation from the dangerous political turn it was taking, "I knew it was merely the language and not the sentiment of our song that Monsieur Darpent did not comprehend."
And when it was translated and paraphrased, he exclaimed, "Ah! truly Mademoiselle may trust me that such sentiments are the breath of life to those who are both French and of the robe. May ONE at least live to prove it to her!"
The times were threatening in France as well as in England, for if in the latter realm, the thunderbolt had fallen, in the former, the tempest seemed to be gathering. They say that it dispersed after a few showers, but there are others who say that it is only stored up to fall with greater fury in later times. Ah, well! if it be so, I pray that none of mine may be living to see it, for I cannot conceal from myself that there is much among us that may well call down the vengeance of Heaven. Yet, if our good Duke of Burgundy fulfil the promise of his youth, the evil may yet be averted.
The Parliament of Paris had made an attempt to check the reckless exactions of the Court by refusing to register the recent edicts for taxation, and it was this that made the Queen so angry with them. Eustace began to explain that it had been the unfortunate endeavour to raise money without the consent of Parliament that had been the immediate cause of the troubles in England for which they were still suffering. This implied censure of King Charles so displeased my mother that she declared that she would listen to such treason no longer, started up and quitted the room, calling Annora with her. Poor Annora gave one of her grim looks, but was obliged to obey; I did not feel bound to do the same, as indeed I stood in the position of hostess: so I remained, with Gaspard leaning on my lap, while my brother and M. Darpent continued their conversation, and the latter began to describe the actual matter in debate, the Paulette, namely, the right of magistrates to purchase the succession to their offices for their sons, provided a certain annual amount was paid to the Crown. The right had to be continually renewed by fresh edicts for a certain term. This term was now over, and the Crown refused to renew it except on condition that all that salaries should be forfeited for four years. To our English notions the whole system was a corruption, but the horrible ill faith of the Court, which ruined and cheated so many families, was nevertheless shocking to us. Clement Darpent, who had always looked on the Paulette as a useful guarantee, and expected to succeed to his father"s office as naturally as Eustace had done to the baronies of Walwyn and Ribaumont, could not then see it in the same light, and expatiated on the speeches made by the Councillors Broussel, Blancmesnil, and others, on the injustice of such a measure.
Gaspard caught the name of Blancmesnil, and looking up, he said "Blancmesnil! It is he that the King says is a scoundrel to resist his will; but he will soon be shut up. They are going to arrest him."
"Pray how long have they taken little imps like thee into their counsels?" demanded Eustace, as we all sat petrified at this announcement.
"It was the Duke of Anjou who told me," said Gaspard. "He was sitting at the foot of the Queen"s bed when she settled it all with M. le Cardinal. They will send to have coup de main made of all those rogues as soon as the Te Deum is over tomorrow at Notre Dame, and then there will be no more refusing of money for M. le Prince to beat the Spaniards with."
"The Duke should choose his confidants better," said Eustace. "Look here, my nephew. Remember from henceforth that whatever pa.s.ses in secret council is sacred, and even if told to thee inadvertently should never be repeated. Now leave us; your mother needs you no longer."
My little boy made his graceful bow at the door, looking much perplexed, and departed. I rose likewise, saying I would forbid him to repeat his dangerous communication, and I trusted that it would do him no harm.
"Madame," said M. Darpent, "I will not conceal from you that I shall take advantage of what I have heard to warn these friends of my father."
"You cannot be expected to do otherwise," said Eustace; "and truly the design is so arbitrary and unjust that, Cavalier as I am, I cannot but rejoice that it should be baffled."
"And," added Darpent, before I could speak, "Madame may be secure that no word shall pa.s.s my lips respecting the manner in which I received the warning."
I answered that I could trust him for that. I could not expect any more from him, and indeed none of us were bound in honour. The fault was with the Duke of Anjou, who, as we all know, was an incorrigible chatter-box all his life, and never was trusted with any State secrets at all; but his mother must have supposed him not old enough to understand what she was talking about, when she let him overhear such a conversation.
Gaspard had, however, a private lecture from both of us on the need of holding his tongue, both on this matter and all other palace gossip. He was no longer in waiting, and I trusted that all would be forgotten before his turn came again; but he was to join in the state procession on the following day, a Sunday, when the King and Queen-Regent were return thanks at Notre Dame for the victory at Lens.
Ah, children! we had victories then. Our Te Deums were not sung with doubting hearts, to make the populace believe a defeat a victory-a delusion to which this French nation of ours is only too p.r.o.ne. My countryman, Marlborough, and the little truant Abbe, Eugene of Savoy, were not then the leaders of the opposite armies; but at the head of our own, we had M. le Prince and the Vicomte de Turenne in the flower of their age, and our triumphs were such that they might well intoxicate the King, who was, so to speak, brought up upon them. It was a magnificent sight, which we all saw from different quarters-my mother in the suite of the Queen of England, Gaspard among the little n.o.blemen who attended the King, I among the ladies who followed Mademoiselle, while my brother and sister, though they might have gone among their own Queen"s train, chose to shift for themselves. They said they should see more than if, like us, they formed part of the pageant; but I believe the real reason was, that if they had one early to Queen Henrietta"s apartments in full dress, they must have missed their English prayers at the Amba.s.sador"s, which they never chose to do on a Sunday.
The choir part of the nave was filled with tribunes for the royal family and their suites; and as the most exalted in rank went the last, Mademoiselle, and we ladies behind her, came to our places early enough to see a great deal of the rest of the procession. The whole choir was already a field of clergy and choristers, the white robes of the latter giving relief to the richly-embroidered purple and lace-covered robes of the Bishops, who wore their gold and jeweled mitres, while their richly-gilded pastoral staves and crosses were borne before them. The Coadjutor of Paris, who was to be the Celebrant, was already by the Altar, his robes absolutely encrusted with gold; and just after we had taken our places there pa.s.sed up the Cardinal, with his pillars borne before him, in his scarlet hat and his robes.
Every lady was, according to the Spanish fashion, which Queen Anne had introduced, in black or in white-the demoiselles in white, the married in black-and all with the black lace veil on their heads. The French ladies had murmured much at this, but there is no denying that the general effect was much better for the long lines of black above and white below, and as there was no restriction upon their jewellery, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds flashed wherever the light fell on them.
Beyond, a lane was preserved all down the length of the nave by the tall, towering forms of the Scottish archers, in their rich accoutrements, many of them gallant gentlemen, who had served under the Marquess of Montrose; and in the aisles behind them surged the whole mult.i.tude-gentlemen, ladies, bourgeois, fishwives, artisans, all sorts of people, mixed up together, and treating one another with a civility and forbearance of which my brother and sister confessed and English crowd would have been incapable, though they showed absolutely no reverence to the sacred place; and I must own the ladies showed as little, for every one was talking, laughing, bowing to acquaintance, or pointing out notorieties, and low whispers were going about of some great and secret undertaking of the Queen-Regent. Low, did I say! Nay, I heard the words "Blancmesnil and Broussel" quite loud enough to satisfy me that if the attempt had been disclosed, it would not be possible to fix the blame of betraying it on my little son more than on twenty others. Indeed the Queen of England observed to her niece, loud enough for me to hear her, that it was only too like what she remembered only seven years ago in England, when her dear King had gone down to arrest those five rogues of members, and all had failed because of that vile gossip Lady Carlisle.
"And who told my Lady Carlisle?" demanded Mademoiselle with some archness; whereupon Queen Henrietta became very curious to know whether the handsome Duke of Beaufort were, after his foolish fashion, in the crowd, making himself agreeable to the ladies of the market-place.
Trumpets, however, sounded, and all rose from their seats, as up the nave swept Queen Anne, her black mantilla descending over her fair hair from a little diamond crown, her dress-white satin-with a huge long blue velvet train worked with gold fleurs-de-lys, supported by four pair of little pages in white satin. Most regal did she look, leading by the hand the little Duke of Anjou; while the young King, who was now old enough to form the climax of the procession, marched next after in blue and gold, holding his plumed hat in his hand, and bowing right and left with all his royal courtesy and grace, his beautiful fair hair on his shoulders, shining with the sun. And there was my little Marquis among the boys, who immediately followed him in all his bright beauty and grace.
Most glorious was the High Ma.s.s that followed. Officer after officer marched up and laid standard after standard before the Altar, heavy with German blazonry, or with the red and gold stripes of Aragon, the embattled castles of Castille, till they amounted to seventy-three. It must have been strange to the Spanish Queen to rejoice over these as they lay piled in a gorgeous heap before the high Altar, here and there one dim with weather or stained with blood. The peals of the Te Deum from a thousand voices were unspeakably magnificent, and yet through them all it seemed to me that I heard the wail not only of the mult.i.tudes of widowed wives and sonless parents, but of the poor peasants of all the nation, crying aloud to Heaven for the bread which they were forbidden to eat, when they had toiled for it in the sweat of their brow. Yes, and which I was not permitted to let them enjoy!
Ah! which did the Almighty listen to? To the praise, or to the mourning, lamentation, and woe? You have often wondered, my children, that I absented myself from the Te Deums of victory while we had them. Now you know the reason.
And then I knew that all this display was only an excuse under which the Queen hid her real design of crushing all opposition to her will. She wanted to commit an injustice, and silence all appeals against it, so that the poor might be more and more ground down! How strange in the woman whom I had seen bearing patiently, nay, joyfully, with the murmurs of the f.a.ggot-seller in the hospital! Truly she knew not what she did!
As she left the Cathedral, and pa.s.sed M. de Comminges, a lieutenant of her Guards, she said: "Go, and Heaven be with you."
I was soon at home safely with my boys, to carry an account of our doings to my dear little M. d"Aubepine, who, unable to bear the fatigue and the crush of Notre Dame, had taken her little children to a Ma.s.s of thanksgiving celebrated by our good Abbe at the nearest Church.
We waited long and long for the others to come. I was not uneasy for my mother, who was with the Queen; but the servants brought reports that the canaille had risen, and that the streets were in wild confusion. We could see nothing, and only heard wild shouts from time to time. What could have become of Eustace and Annora? My mother would have been afraid that with their wild English notions they had rushed into something most unsuitable to a French demoiselle, and I was afraid for Eustace, if they were involved in any crowd or confusion, for his strength was far from being equal to his spirit. We watched, sure that we heard cries and shouts in the distance, the roar of the populace, such as I remembered on that wedding day, but sharper and shriller, as French voices are in a different key from the English roar and growl.
It pa.s.sed, however, and there was long silence. Gaspard and Armantine stood at the window, and at last, as evening twilight fell, cried out that a carriage was coming in at the porte cochere. Presently Annora ran into the room, all in a glow, and Eustace followed more slowly.
"Have you been frightened?" she cried. "Oh, we have had such an adventure! If they had not screamed and shrieked like peac.o.c.ks, or furies, I could have thought myself in England."
"Alack! that a tumult should seem like home to you, sister," said Eustace gravely.
Then they told how at the amba.s.sador"s chapel they had heard that good Lady Fanshawe, whom they had known in England, had arrived sick and sad, after the loss of a young child. They determined, therefore, to steal away from Notre Dame before the ceremony was over, and go to see whether anything could be done for her. They could not, however, get out so quickly as they expected, and they were in the Rue de Marmousets when they saw surging towards them a tremendous crowd, shouting, screeching, shrieking, roaring, trying to stop a carriage which was being urged on with six horses, with the royal guards trying to force their way. Eustace, afraid of his sister being swept from him, looked for some escape, but the mob went faster than they could do; and they might soon have been involved in it and trampled down. There seemed no opening in the tall houses, when suddenly a little door opened close to them, and there was a cry of surprise; a hand was put out.
"You here! Nay, pardon me, Mademoiselle; take my arm."
Clement Darpent was there. A few steps more, and taking out a small key, he fitted it into the same little door, and led them into a dark pa.s.sage, then up a stair, into a large room, simply furnished, and one end almost like an oratory. Here, looking anxiously from the window, was an old lady in a plain black dress and black silk hood, with a white ap.r.o.n and keys at her girdle.
"My mother," said Clement, "this gentleman and lady, M. le Baron de Ribaumont and Mademoiselle sa soeur, have become involved in this crowd. They will do us the favour of taking shelter here till the uproar is over."
Madame Darpent welcomed them kindly, but with anxious inquiries. Her son only threw her a word in answer, prayed to be excused, and dashed off again.
"Ah! there he is. May he be saved, the good old man," cried Madame Darpent.
And they could see a carriage with four horses containing the Lieutenant Comminges holding a white-haired old man, in a very shabby dressing-gown; while soldiers, men, women, boys, all struggled, fought, and shrieked round it, like the furies let loose. The carriage pa.s.sed on, but the noise and struggle continued, and Madame Darpent was soon intensely anxious about her son.
It seemed that Clement had carried his warnings, and that four or five of the councillors had taken care to be beyond the walls of Paris; among them his own father, the Councillor Darpent, who was a prudent man, and thought it best to be on the right side. The President Broussel, a good-humoured, simple, hearty old man, was not quite well, and though he thanked his young friend, he would not believe any such harm was intended against him as to make him derange his course of medicine.
Thus, when Comminges marched into the house to arrest him, he was sitting at dinner, eating his bouillon, in dressing-gown and slippers. His daughter cried out that he was not fit to leave the house. At the same time, an old maid-servant put her head out at a window, screaming that her master was going to be carried off.
He was much beloved, and a host of people ran together, trying to break the carriage and cut the traces. Comminges, seeing that no time was to be lost, forced the poor old lawyer down to the carriage just as he was, in his dressing-gown and slippers, and drove off. But the mob thickened every moment, in spite of the guards, and a very few yards beyond where they had taken refuge at Madame Darpent"s, a large wooden bench had been thrown across the street, and the uproar redoubled round it-the yells, shrieks, and cries ringing all down the road. However, the carriage pa.s.sed that, and dashed on, throwing down and crushing people right and left; so that Madame Darpent was first in terror for her son, and then would fain have rushed out to help the limping, crying sufferers.
They heard another horrible outcry, but could see no more, except the fluctuating heads of the throng below them, and loud yells, howls, and maledictions came to their ears. By and by, however, Clement returned, having lost his hat in the crowd; with blood on his collar, and with one of his lace cuffs torn, though he said he was not hurt.
"They have him!" he said bitterly; "the tyranny has succeeded!"
"Oh, hush, my son! Take care!" cried his mother.
"M. le Baron and I understand one another, Madame," he said, smiling.
He went on to tell that the carriage had been overturned on the Quai des Orfevres, just opposite the hotel of the First President. Comminges sprang out, sword in hand, drove back the crowd, who would have helped out Broussel, and shouted for the soldiers, some of whom kept back those who would have succoured the prisoner with their drawn swords. Clement himself had been slightly touched, but was forced back in the scuffle; while the good old man called out to him not to let any one be hurt on his behalf.
Other soldiers were meantime seizing a pa.s.sing carriage, and taking out a poor lady who occupied it. Before it could be brought near, the raging crowd had brought axes and hacked it to pieces. Comminges and his soldiers, well-armed, still dragged their victim along till a troop of the Queen"s guards came up with another carriage, in which the poor old President was finally carried off.
"And this is what we have to submit to from a Spaniard and an Italian!" cried Clement Darpent.
He had come back to rea.s.sure his mother and his guests, but the tumult was raging higher than ever. The crowd had surrounded the Tuileries, filling the air with shouts of "Broussel! Broussel!" and threatening to tear down the doors and break in, overwhelming the guards. Eustace and his host went out again, and presently reported that the Marshal de Meileraye had been half killed, but had been rescued by the Coadjutor, who was giving the people all manner of promises. This was verified by shouts of "Vive le Roi!" and by and by the crowd came past once more, surrounding the carriage, on the top of which was seated the Coadjutor, in his violet robes, but with his skull cap away, and his cheek bleeding from the blow of a stone. He was haranguing, gesticulating, blessing, doing all in his power to pacify the crowd, and with the hope of the release of the councilors all was quieting down; and Clement, after reconnoitering, thought it safe to order the carriage to take home his guests.
"No one can describe," said my sister, "how good and sweet Madame was, though she looked so like a Puritan dame. Her face was so wonderfully calm and n.o.ble, like some grand old saint in a picture; and it lighted up so whenever her son came near her, I wanted to ask her blessing! And I think she gave it inwardly. She curtsied, and would have kissed my hand, as being only bourgeois, while I was n.o.ble; but I told her I would have no such folly, and I made her give me a good motherly embrace!"
"I hope she gave you something to eat," I said, laughing.
"Oh, yes; we had an excellent meal. She made us eat before sending us home, soup, and ragout, and chocolate-excellent chocolate. She had it brought as soon as possible, because Eustace looked so pale and tired. Oh, Meg! She is the very best creature I have seen in France. Your Rambouillets are nothing to her! I hope I may see her often again!"
And while Eustace marveled if this were a pa.s.sing tumult or the beginning of a civil war, my most immediate wonder was what my mother would say to this adventure.
CHAPTER XVI. - THE BARRICADES
My mother did not come home till the evening, when the streets had become tolerably quiet. She had a strange account to give, for she had been at the palace all the time in attendance on Queen Henrietta, who tried in vain to impress her sister-in-law with a sense that the matter was serious. Queen Anne of Austria was too proud to believe that a parliament and a mob could do any damage to the throne of France, whatever they might effect in England.
There she sat in her grand cabinet, and with her were the Cardinal, the Duke of Longueville, and many other gentlemen, especially Messieurs de Nogent and de Beautru, who were the wits, if not the buffoons of the Court, and who turned all the reports they heard into ridicule. The Queen-Regent smiled in her haughty way, but the Queen of England laid her hand sadly on my mother"s arm and said, "Alas, my dear friend, was it not thus that once we laughed?"
Presently in came Marshal de la Meilleraye and the Coadjutor, and their faces and gestures showed plainly that they were seriously alarmed; but M. de Beautru, nothing daunted, turned to the Regent, saying, "How ill Her Majesty must be, since M. le Coadjutor is come to bring her extreme unction," whereupon there was another great burst of applause and laughter.
The Coadjutor pretended not to hear, and addressing the Queen told her that he had come to offer his services to her at a moment of pressing danger. Anne of Austria only vouchsafed a little nod with her head, by way at once of thanks, and showing how officious and superfluous she thought him, while Nogent and Beautru continued to mimic the dismay of poor Broussel, seized in his dressing-gown and slippers, and the shrieks of his old housekeeper from the window. "Did no one silence them for being so unmanly?" cried Annora, as she heard this.
"Child, thou art foolish!" said my mother with dignity. "Why should the resistance of canaille like that be observed at all, save to make sport?"
For my poor mother, since she had been dipped again into the Court atmosphere, had learned to look on whatever was not n.o.ble, as not of the same nature with herself. However, she said that Marshal de la Meilleraye, a thorough soldier, broke in by a.s.suring the Queen that the populace were in arms, howling for Broussel, and the Coadjutor began to describe the fierce tumult through which he had made his way, but the Cardinal only gave his dainty provoking Italian smile, and the Queen-Regent proudly affirmed that there neither was nor could be a revolt.
"We know," added Mazarin, in his blandest tone of irony, "that M. le Coadjuteur is so devoted to the Court, and so solicitous for his flock, that a little over-anxiety must be pardoned to him!"
This was while shouts of "BROUSSEL! BROUSSEL!" were echoing through the palace, and in a few moments came the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guards to say that the populace were threatening to overpower the soldiers at the gates; and next came the Chancellor, nearly frightened out of his wits, saying that he had seen the people howling like a pack of wolves, carrying all sorts of strange weapons, and ready to force their way in. Then old Monsieur Guitauet, the Colonel of the Guards, declared "that the old rogue Broussel must be surrendered, dead or alive."
"The former step would not be accordant with the Queen"s piety nor her justice," broke in the Coadjutor; "the second might stop the tumult."
"I understand you, M. le Coadjuteur," broke out the Queen. "You want me to set Broussel at liberty. I would rather strangle him with my own hands, and those who-"
And she held those plump white hands of hers almost close to the Archbishop"s face, as if she were ready to do it, but Cardinal Mazarin whispered something in her ear which made her less violent, and the next moment the lieutenant of police came in, with such a terrific account of the fury of the mob and their numbers, that there was no more incredulity; it was plain that there was really a most frightful uproar, and both the Regent and the Cardinal entreated the Coadjutor to go down and pacify the people by promises. He tried to obtain from the Queen some written promise.
"He was right," said Eustace.
"Right!" cried my mother. "What! to seek to bind Her Majesty down by written words, like a base mechanical bourgeois? I am ashamed of you, my son! No, indeed, we all cried out upon him, Archbishop though he were, and told him that Her Majesty"s word was worth ten thousand bonds."
"May it be so proved!" muttered Eustace, while my mother went on to describe how the Coadjutor was pressed, pushed, and almost dragged down the great stair-case to speak to the infuriated people who were yelling and shrieking outside the court. Monsieur de Meilleraye went before him, backed by all the light horse drawn up in the court, and mounting his horse, drew his sword crying, "Vive le Roi! Liberty for Broussel!" he was met by a cry of "To arms, to arms!" and there was a rush against him, some trying to pull him off his horse, and one attacking him with a rusty old sword. The Marshal fired at him and he fell, severely wounded, just as the Coadjutor came down, and seeing him lying in the gutter like one dead, knelt down by him, heard his confession, and absolved him.
(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.
But when my mother came to hear how he and Annora had witnessed the scene from the windows of M. Darpent"s house, her indignation knew no bounds. I never saw her so angry with Eustace as she now was, that he should have taken his sister into the house of one of these councillors; a bourgeois house was bad enough, but that it should have been actually one of the disaffected, and that the Darpent carriage should have been seen at our door, filled her with horror. It was enough to ruin us all for ever with the Court.
"What have we to do with the Court?" cried my sister, and this, of course, only added fuel to the flame, till at last my mother came to declaring that she should never trust her daughter with my brother again, for he was not fit to take care of her.
But we were all surprised by Eustace, when he bade my mother good-night, quietly bending his dark curled head, ad saying: "My mother, I ask your pardon, I am sorry I offended you."
"My son, my dear son," she cried, embracing him. "Never think of it more, only if we never go home, I cannot have your sister made a mere bourgeoise."
"How could you, brother!" cried Annora, waiting outside the door. "Now you have owned yourself in the wrong!"
"I have not said so, Nan," he answered. "I have simply said I was sorry to have offended my mother, and that is true; I could not sleep under her displeasure."
"But you do not care about ruining yourself with this perfidious foreign Court."
"Not a rush, so long as I do not bring Meg and her son into danger."
Things were quiet that night, but every one knew that it was only a lull in the storm.
I set off to morning ma.s.s with my son and little Armantine as usual, thinking all would be quiet so early in our part of the city, but before the service was over there was the dull roar of the populace in a fury to be heard in the distance, and Nicole met me at the church door entreating me to get home as quickly as possible.
To my dismay there was a large heavy chain across the end of the street, not such as to stop foot pa.s.sengers, but barring the way against carriages, and the street was fast filling with shopkeepers, apprentices, market-women, and all sorts of people. The children clung to my hands, half frightened and half eager. Suddenly we saw a carriage stopped by the chain, and the people crowding round it. Out of it sprang two gentlemen and a lady, and began hurrying forward like people hunted. I drew the children back into the church porch, and was shocked to see that those who were then fleeing in haste and terror were the Chancellor, M. Seguier, with his brother, the Bishop of Meaux, and his daughter the beautiful young d.u.c.h.ess de Sully. I tried to attract their attention and draw them into the church as a place of safety, but they were in too much haste and terror to perceive me, and a man began shouting after them: "To arms, friends, to arms! There"s the enemy. Kill him! and we shall have vengeance for all we suffer!"
The mob rushed after, shouting horribly. Armantine began to cry, and I took her in my arms, while Nicole held my son.
The whole crowd rushed past us, never heeding us, as we stood above them, and as we were only thirty yards from home I hoped soon to reach it, though I hesitated, as the screeches, yells, and howls were still to be heard lower down the street, and fresh parties of men, women, and children kept rushing down to join the throng. If it should surge back again before we could get home, what would become of us?
Suddenly Gaspard cried out: "My uncle!" And there was indeed my brother. "Good heavens!" he cried, "you there, sister! They told me you were gone to church, but I could hardly believe it! Come home before the mob comes back."
I asked anxiously for the Chancellor, and heard he had escaped into the Hotel de Luynes, which was three doors beyond ours. He had set out at six in the morning for the palace, it was believed to take orders for breaking up the Parliament. His daughter, thinking there might be danger, chose to go with him, and so did his brother the Bishop; but the instant he was known to be entangled in the streets, the mob rose on him, the chains were put up, he had to leave his carriage and flee on foot to the Hotel de Luynes, where his brother-in-law lived. There the door was open, but no one was up but an old servant, and, in the utmost terror, the unhappy Chancellor rushed into a little wainscoted closet, where he shut himself up, confessing his sins to the Bishop, believing his last moments were come. In fact, the mob did search all over the hotel, some meaning to make him a hostage for Broussel, and others shouting that they would cut him to pieces to show what fate awaited the instruments of tyranny. They did actually beat against the wainscot of his secret chamber, but hearing nothing, they left the spot, but continued to keep guard round the house, shouting out execrations against him.
Meantime Eustace had brought us safely home, where the first thing we did was to hurry up to the balcony, where Annora was already watching anxiously.
Presently, Marshal de Meilleraye and his light horse came galloping and clattering down the street, while the mob fled headlong, hither and thither, before them. A carriage was brought out, and the Chancellor with his brother and daughter was put into it, but as they were driving off the mob rallied again and began to pursue them. A shot was fired, and a poor woman, under a heavy basket, fell. There was another outburst of curses, screams, howls, yells, shots; and carriage, guards, people, all rushed past us, the coach going at the full speed of its six horses, amid a shower of stones, and even bullets, the guards galloping after, sometimes firing or cutting with their swords, the people keeping up with them at a headlong pace, pelting them with stones and dirt, and often firing at them, for, indeed, the poor young d.u.c.h.ess received a wound before they could reach the palace. Meanwhile others of the mob began ransacking the Hotel de Luynes in their rage at the Chancellor"s escape, and they made dreadful havoc of the furniture, although they did not pillage it.
My mother wept bitterly, declaring that the evil days she had seen in England were pursuing her to France; and we could not persuade her that we were in no danger, until the populace, having done their worst at the Hotel de Luynes, drifted away from our street. Eustace could not of course bear to stay shut up and knowing nothing, and he and the Abbe both went out different ways, leaving us to devour our anxiety as best we could, knowing nothing but that there was a chain across each end of our street, with a double row of stakes on either side, banked up with earth, stones, straw, all sorts of things, and guarded by men with all manner of queer old weapons that had come down from the wars of the League. Eustace even came upon one of the old-fashioned arquebuses standing on three legs to be fired; and, what was worse, there was a gorget with the portrait of the murderer of Henri III. enameled on it, and the inscription "S. Jacques Clement," but the Coadjutor had the horrible thing broken up publicly. My brother said things did indeed remind him of the rusty old weapons that were taken down at the beginning of the Rebellion. He had been to M. Darpent"s, and found him exceedingly busy, and had learned from him that the Coadjutor was at the bottom of all this day"s disturbance. Yes, Archbishop de Gondi himself. He had been bitterly offended at the mocking, mistrustful way in which his services had been treated, and besides, reports came to him that Cardinal talked of sending him of Quimper Corentin, and Broussel to Havre, and the Chancellor to dismiss the Parliament! He had taken counsel with his friends, and determined to put himself and the head of the popular movement and be revenged upon the Court, and one of his familiar a.s.sociates, M. d"Argenteuil, had disguised himself as a mason, and led the attack with a rule in his hand, while a lady, Madame Martineau, had beaten the drum and collected the throng to guard the gates and attack the Chancellor. There were, it was computed, no less than 1260 barricades all over Paris, and the Parliament was perfectly amazed at the excitement produced by the capture of Broussel. Finding that they had such supporters, the Parliament was more than ever determined to make a stand for its rights-whatever they might be.
The Queen had sent to command the Coadjutor to appease the sedition, but he had answered that he had made himself so odious by his exertions of the previous day that he could not undertake what was desired of him.