ters
had surrounded the portraits of the minister. One of these pictures was
guarded by arquebusiers, who, however, could not preserve it from the
stones which were thrown at it from a distance by unseen hands. It
represented the Cardinal-Generalissimo wearing a casque surrounded by
laurels. Above it was inscribed:

"Grand Duc: c'est justement que la France t'honore;
Ainsi que le dieu Mars dans Paris on t'adore."

These fine phrases did not persuade the people that they were happy.
They no more adored the Cardinal than they did the god Mars, but they
accepted his fetes because they served as a covering for disorder. All
Paris was in an uproar. Men with long beards, carrying torches, measures
of wine, and two drinking-cups, which they knocked together with a great
noise, went along, arm in arm, shouting in chorus with rude voices an
old round of the League:

"Reprenons la danse;
Allons, c'est assez.
Le printemps commence;
Les rois sont passes.

"Prenons quelque treve;
Nous sommes lasses.
Les rois de la feve
Nous ont harasses.

"Allons, Jean du Mayne,
Les rois sont passes.

"Les rois de la feve
Nous ont harasses.
Allons, Jean du Mayne,
Les rois sont passes."

The frightful bands who howled forth these words traversed the Quais and
the Pont-Neuf, squeezing against the high houses, which then covered the
latter, the peaceful citizens who were led there by simple curiosity.
Two young men, wrapped in cloaks, thus thrown one against the other,
recognized each other by the light of a torch placed at the foot of the
statue of Henri IV, which had been lately raised.

"What! still at Paris?" said Corneille to Milton. "I thought you were in
London."

"Hear you the people, Monsieur? Do you hear them? What is this ominous
chorus,

'Les rois sont passes'?"

"That is nothing, Monsieur. Listen to their conversation."

"The parliament is dead," said one of the men; "the nobles are dead.
Let us dance; we are the masters. The old Cardinal is dying. There is no
longer any but the King and ourselves."

"Do you hear that drunken wretch, Monsieur?" asked Corneille. "All our
epoch is in those words of his."

"What! is this the work of the minister who is called great among you,
and even by other nations? I do not understand him."