xperience of defeat in the
service of the foreigner.

The king had proclaimed a general amnesty on the 18th of October; and on
the 21st he set out in state for Paris. The Duke of Orleans still
wavered. "You wanted peace," said Madame, "when it depended but on you
to make war; you now want war when you can make neither war nor peace.
It is of no use to think any longer of anything but going with a good
grace to meet the king." At these words he exclaimed aloud, as if it had
been proposed to him to go and throw himself in the river. "And where
the devil should I go?" he answered. He remained at the Luxembourg. On
drawing near Paris, the king sent word to his uncle that he would have to
leave the city. Gaston replied in the following letter:--

"MONSEIGNEUR: Having understood from my cousin the Duke of Danville
and from Sieur d'Aligre, the respect that your Majesty would have me
pay you, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to allow me to assure
you by these lines that I do not propose to remain in Paris longer
than tillto-morrow; and that I will go my way to my house at
Limours, having no more passionate desire than to testify by my
perfect obedience that I am, with submission,

"Monseigneur,
"Your most humble and most obedient servant and subject,
"GASTON."

The Duke of Orleans retired before long to his castle at Blois, where he
died in 1660; deserted, towards the end of his life, by all the friends
he had successively abandoned and betrayed. "He had, with the exception
of courage, all that was necessary to make an honorable man," says
Cardinal de Retz, "but weakness was predominant in his heart through
fear, and in his mind through irresolution; it disfigured the whole
course of his life. He engaged in everything because he had not strength
to resist those who drew him on, and he always came out disgracefully,
because he had not the courage to support them." He was a prey to fear,
fear of his friends as well as of his enemies.

The Fronde was all over, that of the gentry of the long robe as well as
that of the gentry of the sword. The Parliament of Paris was once more
falling in the state to the rank which had been assigned to it by
Richelieu, and from which it had wanted to emerge by a supreme effort.
The attempt had been the same in France as in England, however different
had been the success. It was the same yearnings of patriotism and
freedom, the s