of God, help sometimes to
destroy and sometimes to preserve them. The interests of the Spaniards
and of the Prince of Conde were not identical. He desired to become the
master of France, and to command in the king's name; the enemy were
laboring to humiliate France and to prolong the war indefinitely: The
arch-duke recalled Count Fuendalsagna to Dunkerque; and Turenne,
withstanding the terrors of the court, which would fain have fled first
into Normandy and then to Lyons, prevailed upon the queen to establish
herself at Pontoise, whilst the army occupied Compiegne. At every point
cutting off the passage of the Duke of Lorraine, who had been re-enforced
by a body of Spaniards, Turenne held the enemy in check for three weeks,
and prevented them from marching on Paris. All parties began to tire of
hostilities.

Cardinal Mazarin took his line, and loudly demanded of the king
permission to withdraw, in order, by his departure, to restore peace to
the kingdom. The queen refused. "There is no consideration shown," she
said, "for my son's honor and my own; we will not suffer him to go away."
But the cardinal insisted. Prudent and far-sighted as he was, he knew
that to depart was the only way of remaining. He departed on the 19th of
August, but without leaving the frontier: he took up his quarters at
Bouillon. The queen had summoned the Parliament to her at Pontoise. A
small number of magistrates responded to her summons, enough, however, to
give the queen the right to proclaim rebellious the Parliament remaining
at Paris. Chancellor Srguier made his escape, in order to go and rejoin
the court. Nobody really believed in the cardinal's withdrawal; men are
fond of yielding to appear ances in order to excuse in their own eyes a
change in their own purposes. Disorder went on increasing in Paris; the
great lords, in their discontent, were quarrelling one with another; the
Prince of Conde struck M. de Rieux, who returned the blow; the Duke of
Nemours was killed in a duel by M. de Beaufort; the burgesses were
growing weary of so much anarchy; a public display of feeling in favor
of peace took place on the 24th of September in the garden of the
Palais-Royal; those present stuck in their hats pieces of white paper in
opposition to the Frondeurs' tufts of straw. People fought in the
streets on behalf of these tokens. For some weeks past Cardinal de Retz
had remained inactive, and his friends pressed him to move. "You see
qu