eed. Then he quitted his retreat and reappeared at
Paris. It must have been necessary for him to go very far in
conciliation to be received again into favour. He succeeded in it,
however, by saving appearances, to use a modern phrase, and in skilfully
managing the transition. He made his peace with the politic and gracious
Cardinal, rode in his carriage, saying with as much reason as wit,
"Everything happens in France!" He managed to get his son into intimacy
with the young King, and, wonderful to relate, he obtained from Mazarin,
in indemnification for the losses he had experienced in carrying on war
against him, a thumping pension of eight thousand livres.

If space permitted us thus to run over successively the list of all the
great nobles who had previously had a hand in the Fronde, it would be
easy to show that on the 3rd of February, 1653, the most ardent and the
most illustrious of those we have cited, and many others, such as the
Duke d'Elbeuf and Marshal Houdancourt, both generals of the Fronde at
Paris in 1648 and 1649, the Duke de Guise, so strongly bound to Conde,
almost all, in short, were ranged round Mazarin, and fought with him and
for him, and that for one sole but very sufficient reason--which was
that the clever Cardinal knew how to make them understand wherein lay
their true interests.

Self-interest, self-interest, such was, with very few exceptions, the
unique mainspring of the aristocracy in the Fronde, and La Rochefoucauld
has only erected into a maxim and even generalised into excess the
principle which he had seen practised everywhere around him.

It may thus be judged whether, as some writers have asserted without the
slightest knowledge of the facts, the Fronde was a great and generous
cause which failed of obtaining success. On the contrary, it was simply
a powerful coalition of individual interests, and if considered under
the aspect of an abortive anticipation of the French revolution, and
some general design sought for therein in one way or another, it would
be rather that of stifling in its cradle the principles of that
revolution.

Is it true that the Fronde, as has been asserted, was a counterpart, a
sort of miserable imitation, of the revolution which was then convulsing
England? Not the least in the world. That other error, still stranger
than the preceding, rests upon a false and deceitful analogy--that
common shoal of historical considerations and comparisons. At bottom,
the ea