of Meaux.
He was not discovered, and the crowd moved off in another direction. "It
was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf
over the whole city. Everybody without exception took up arms. Children
of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand; and the mothers
themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more
than two hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that
the League had left entire. Everybody cried, 'Hurrah! for the king!' but
echo answered, 'None of your Mazarin!'"

The coadjutor kept himself shut up at home, protesting his powerlessness;
the Parliament had met at an early hour; the Palace of Justice was
surrounded by an immense crowd, shouting, "Broussel! Broussel!" The
Parliament resolved to go in a body and demand of the queen the release
of their members arrested the day before. "We set out in full court,"
says the premier president Mole, "without sending, as the custom is, to
ask the queen to appoint a time, the ushers in front, with their square
caps and a-foot: from this spot as far as the Trahoir cross we found the
people in arms and barricades thrown up at every hundred paces."
[_Memoires de Matthieu Mole,_ iii. p. 255.]

[Illustration: President Mole----355]

"If it were not blasphemy to say that there was any one in our age more
intrepid than the great Gustavus and the Prince, I should say it was M.
Mole, premier president," writes Cardinal de Retz. Sincerely devoted to
the public weal, and a magistrate to the very bottom of his soul, Mole,
nevertheless, inclined towards the side of power, and understood better
than his brethren the danger of factions. He represented to the queen
the extreme danger the sedition was causing to Paris and to France.
"She, who feared nothing because she knew but little, flew into a passion
and answered, furiously, 'I am quite aware that there is disturbance in
the city, but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament,
you, your wives, and your children.'" "The queen was pleased," says
Mole, in his dignified language, "to signify in terms of wrath that the
magisterial body should be answerable for the evils which might ensue,
and which the king on reaching his majority would remember."

The queen had retired to her room, slamming the door violently; the
Parliament turned back to the Palace of Justice; the angry mob thronged
about the magistrates; when they arrived