ies past, it may be said that they have been the scourges of the
people and the enemies of the monarchy." The decree passed by a hundred
votes to forty.

On the 24th of December, the cardinal crossed the frontier with a large
body of troops, and was received at Sedan by Lieutenant General Fabert,
faithful to his fortunes even in exile. The Parliament was furious,
and voted, almost unanimously, that the cardinal and his adherents were
guilty of high treason; ordering the communes to hound him down, and
promising, from the proceeds of his furniture and library which were
about to be sold, a sum of five hundred thousand livres to whoever should
take him dead or alive. At once began the sale of the magnificent
library which the cardinal had liberally opened to the public. The
dispersion of the books was happily stopped in time to still leave a
nucleus for the Mazarin Library.

Meanwhile Mazarin had not allowed himself to be frightened by
parliamentary decrees or by dread of assassins. Re-entering France with
six thousand men, he forced the passage of Pontsur-Yonne, in spite of the
two councillors of the Parliaments who were commissioned to have him
arrested; the Duke of Beaufort, at the head of Monsieur's troops, did not
even attempt to impede his march; and, on the 28th of January, the
cardinal entered Poitiers, at once resuming his place beside the king,
who had come to meet him a league from the town. The court took
leisurely the road to Paris.

The coadjutor had received the price of his services in the royal cause;
he was a cardinal "sooner," said he, "than Mazarias would have had him;"
and so the new prince of the church considered himself released from any
gratitude to the court, and sought to form a third party, at the head of
which was to be placed the Duke of Orleans as nominal head. Monsieur,
harried by intrigues in all directions, remained in a state of inaction,
and made a pretension of keeping Paris neutral; his daughter, Mdlle. de
Montpensier, who detested Anne of Austria and Mazarin, and would have
liked to marry the king, had boldly taken the side of the princes; the
court had just arrived at Blois, on the 27th of March, 1652; the keeper
of the seals, Mole, presented himself in front of Orleans to summon the
town to open its gates to the king; at that very moment arrived Mdlle.,
the great Mdlle., as she was then called; and she claimed possession of
Orleans in her father's name. "It was the appana