ueen.

Meanwhile Conde had arrived at Bordeaux: a part of Guienne, Saintonge,
and Porigord had declared in his favor; Count d'Harcourt, at the head of
the royal troops, marched against La Rochelle, which he took from the
revolters under the very beard of the prince, who had come from Bordeaux
to the assistance of the place, whilst the king and the queen, resolutely
quitting Paris, advanced from town to town as far as Poitiers, keeping
the centre of France to its allegiance by their mere presence. The
treaty of the Prince of Conde with Spain was concluded: eight Spanish
vessels, having money and troops on board, entered the Gironde. Conde
delivered over to them the castle and harbor of Talmont. The queen had
commissioned the cardinal to raise levies in Germany, and he had already
entered the country of Liege, embodying troops and forming alliances. On
the 17th of November, Anne of Austria finally wrote to Mazarin to return
to the king's assistance. In the presence of Conde's rebellion she had
no more appearances to keep up with anybody; and it was already in the
master's tone that Mazarin wrote to the queen, on the 30th of October, to
put her on her guard against the Duke of Orleans: "The power committed to
his Royal Highness and the neutrality permitted to him, being as he is
wholly devoted to the prince, surrounded by his partisans, and adhering
blindly to their counsels, are matters highly prejudicial to the king's
service, and, for my part, I do not see how one can be a servant of the
king's, with ever so little judgment and knowledge of affairs, and yet
dispute these truths. The queen, then, must bide her time to remedy all
this."

The cardinal's penetration had not deceived him; the Duke of Orleans was
working away in Paris, where the queen had been obliged to leave him, on
the Prince of Conde's side. The Parliament had assembled to enregister
against the princes the proclamation of high treason despatched from
Bourges by the court; Gaston demanded that it should be sent back,
threatened as they were, he said, with a still greater danger than the
rebellion of the princes in the return of Mazarin, who was even now
advancing to the frontier; but the premier president took no notice, and
put the proclamation to the vote in these words "It is a great misfortune
when princes of the blood give occasion for such proclamations, but this
is a common and ordinary misfortune in the kingdom, and, for five or six
centur