It was to be a short peace. Condé, elated by having beaten the Fronde, claimed a lion's share in the government. His brother, the Prince of Conti, and his sister, the Duchess of Longueville, joined him in these pretensions. The affair ended in a bold step on the part of Mazarin and the queen. The two princes and M. de Longueville were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes, while the princesses were ordered to retire to their estates, and the Duchess of Longueville, fearing arrest, fled in haste to Normandy.

For the present the star of the cardinal was in the ascendant. But his master-stroke set war on foot again. The Parliament of Paris supported the princes. Their partisans rallied. Bordeaux broke into insurrection. Elsewhere hot blood declared itself. The Duke of Orleans joined the party of the prisoners. The Parliament enjoined all the officers of the crown to obey none but the duke, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the night of February 6, 1651, Mazarin set out again for St. Germain. Paris had become far too hot to hold him.

The tidings of his flight brought the people into the streets again. The Duke of Orleans informed Cardinal de Retz that the queen proposed to follow her flying minister, with the boy king.

"What is to be done ?" he asked, somewhat helplessly. "It is a bad business; but how are we to stop it ?"

"How?" cried the more practical De Retz; "why, by shutting the gates of Paris, to begin with. The king must not go."

Within an hour the emissaries of the ready coad jutor were rousing up the people right and left with the tidings of the projected flight of the queen with her son. Soon the city swarmed again with armed and angry men, the gates were seized, mounted guards patrolled the streets, the crowd surged towards the Palais-Royal.

Within the palace all was alarm and confusion. Anne of Austria had indeed been on the point of flight. Her son was in his travelling-dress. But the people were at the door, clamoring to see the king, threatening dire consequences if the doors were not opened to them. They could not long be kept out; some immediate action must be taken. The boy's travelling-attire was quickly replaced by his night dress, and he was laid in bed, his mother cautioning him to lie quiet and feign sleep.

"The king! we must see the king!" came the vociferous cry from the street. "Open! the people demand to see their king."

The doors were forced; the mob was in the palace; clamor and tumult reigned below the royal chambers. The queen sent word to the people that the king was asleep in his bed. They might enter and see him if they would promise to tread softly and keep strict silence. This message at once stopped the tumult; the noise subsided; the people began to file into the room, stepping as noiselessly as though shod with down, gazing with awed eyes on the seemingly sleeping face of the boy king.

The queen stood at the pillow of her son, a grace ful and beautiful woman, her outstretched arm hold

ing back the heavy folds of the drapery, her face schooled to quiet repose. Louis lay with closed eyes and regular breathing, playing his part well. For hours a stream of the men and women of Paris flowed through the chamber, moving in reverential silence, gazing on the boy's face as on a sacred treasure of their own. Till three o'clock in the morning the movement continued, the queen standing all this time like a beautiful statue, her son still feigning slumber. It was a scene of remarkable and picturesque character.

That night of strain and excitement passed. The king was with them still, of that the people were assured; he must remain with them, there must be an end of midnight flights. The patrol was kept up, the gates watched, the king was a prisoner in the hands of the Parisians.

"The king, our master, is a captive," said M. Molé, voicing to the Parliament the queen's complaint.

"He was a captive, in the hands of Mazarin,” replied the Duke of Orleans; “but, thank God, he is so no longer."

The people had won. Mazarin was beaten. He hastened to La Havre, where the princes were then confined, and set them at liberty himself. His power in France, for the time, was at an end. He made his way to the frontier, which he crossed on the 12th of March. He was just in time: the Parliament of Paris had issued orders for his arrest, wherever found in France.

We must end here, with this closing of the contest between Mazarin and the Fronde. History goes on

to tell that the contest was reopened, Mazarin returned, there was battle in Paris, the Fronde failed, and Mazarin died in office.

The popular outbreak here briefly chronicled is of interest from the fact that it immediately followed the success of the insurrection in England and the execution of Charles I. The provocation was the same in the two nations; the result highly different. In both cases it was a revolt against the tyranny of the court and the attempt to establish absolutism. But the difference in results lay in the fact that England had a single parliament, composed of politicians, while France had ten parliaments, composed of magistrates, and unaccustomed to handle great questions of public policy. Richelieu had taken from the civic parliaments of France what little power they possessed, and they were but shadowy prototypes of the English representative assembly. "Without any unity of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples that came to them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither people nor army; the English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her minister."

There lay before France a century and a half of autocratic rule and popular suffering; then was to come the convening of the States-General, the rise of the people, and the final downfall of absolute royalty and feudal privileges in the red tide of the Revolution.

A MARTYR TO HIS PROFESSION.

THE grounds of the Château de Chantilly, that charming retreat of the Prince de Condé, shone with all the splendor which artistic adornments, gleaming lanterns of varied form and color, splendidly-costumed dames and richly-attired cavaliers could give them, the whole scene having a fairy-like beauty and richness wonderfully pleasing to the eye. For more than a mile from the entrance to the grounds men holding lighted torches bordered the road, while in all the villages leading thither the peasants were out in their gala attire, and triumphal arches of verdure were erected in honor of the king, Louis XIV., who was on his way thither to visit Monsieur le Prince.

He was coming, the great Louis, the Grand Monarque of France, and noble and peasant alike were out to bid him welcome, while the artistic skill of the day had exhausted itself in efforts to provide him a splendid reception. And now there could be heard on the road the trampling of horses, the clanking of swords, the voices of approaching men, and a gallant cavalcade wheeled at length into the grounds, announcing that the king was close at hand. A few minutes of anxious expectation passed, and

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