第65章 BOOK III(2)

I must not forget to acquaint you that Madame de Guemenee, who ran away from Paris in a fright the moment it was besieged, no sooner heard that Ihad paid a visit to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse than she returned to town in a rage. I was in such a passion with her for having cowardly deserted me that I took her by the throat, and she was so enraged at my familiarity with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse that she threw a candlestick at my head, but in a quarter of an hour we were very good friends.

The Prince de Conde was no sooner reconciled with the Court than he was publicly reproached in the city for breaking his word with the Frondeurs;but I convinced him that he could not think such treatment strange in a city so justly exasperated against Mazarin, and that, nevertheless, he might depend on my best services, for which he assured me of his constant friendship.

Moissans, now Marechal d'Albret, who was at the head of the King's gendarmes, accustomed himself and others to threaten the chief minister, who augmented the public odium against himself by reestablishing Emeri, a man detested by all the kingdom. We were not a little alarmed at his reestablishment, because this man, who knew Paris better than the Cardinal, distributed money among the people to a very good purpose.

This is a singular science, which is either very beneficial or hurtful in its consequences, according to the wisdom or folly of the distributor.

These donations, laid out with discretion and secrecy, obliged us to yield ourselves more and more unto the bulk of the people, and, finding a fit opportunity for this performance, we took care not to let it slip, which, if they had been ruled by me, we should not have done so soon, for we were not yet forced to make use of such expedients. It is not safe in a faction where you are only upon the defensive to do what you are not pressed to do, but the uneasiness of the subalterns on such occasions is troublesome, because they believe that as soon as you seem to be inactive all is lost. I preached every day that the way was yet rough, and therefore must be made plain, and that patience in the present case was productive of greater effects than activity; but nobody comprehended the truth of what I said.

An unlucky expression, dropped on this occasion by the Princesse de Guemenee, had an incredible influence upon the people. She called to mind a ballad formerly made upon the regiment of Brulon, which was said to consist of only two dragoons and four drummers, and, inasmuch as she hated the Fronde, she told me very pleasantly that our party, being reduced to fourteen, might be justly compared to that regiment of Brulon.

Noirmoutier and Laigues were offended at this expression to that degree that they continually murmured because I neither settled affairs nor pushed them to the last extremity. Upon which I observed that heads of factions are no longer their masters when they are unable either to prevent or allay the murmurs of the people.

The revenues of the Hotel de Ville, which are, as it were, the patrimony of the bourgeois, and which, if well managed, might be of special service to the King in securing to his interest an infinite number of those people who are always the most formidable in revolutions--this sacred fund, I say, suffered much by the licentiousness of the times, the ignorance of Mazarin, and the prevarication of the officers of the Hotel de Ville, who were his dependents, so that the poor annuitants met in great numbers at the Hotel de Ville; but as such assemblies without the Prince's authority are reckoned illegal, the Parliament passed a decree to suppress them. They were privately countenanced by M. de Beaufort and me, to whom they sent a solemn deputation, and they made choice of twelve syndics to be a check upon the 'prevot des marchands'.

On the 11th of December a pistol, as had been concerted beforehand, was fired into the coach of Joly, one of the syndics, which President Charton, another of the syndics, thinking was aimed at himself, the Marquis de la Boulaie ran as if possessed with a devil, while the Parliament was sitting, into the middle of the Great Hall, with fifteen or twenty worthless fellows crying out "To Arms!" He did the like in the streets, but in vain, and came to Broussel and me; but the former reprimanded him after his way, and I threatened to throw him out at the window, for I had reason to believe that he acted in concert with the Cardinal, though he pretended to be a Frondeur.

This artifice of Servien united the Prince to the Cardinal, because he found himself obliged to defend himself against the Frondeurs, who, as he believed, sought to assassinate him. All those that were his own creatures thought they were not zealous enough for his service if they did not exaggerate the imminent danger he had escaped, and the Court parasites confounded the morning adventure with that at night; and upon this coarse canvas they daubed all that the basest flattery, blackest imposture, and the most ridiculous credulity was capable of imagining;and we were informed the next morning that it was the common rumour over all the city that we had formed a design of seizing the King's person and carrying him to the Hotel de Ville, and to assassinate the Prince.