that fourth-of-
July night. "A conspiracy so base," said the generous Talon, "never
stained the soil of France." By deliberate premeditation, an assault was
made by five hundred disguised soldiers on the Parliament assembled in the
Hotel de Ville; the tumult spread; the night rang with a civil conflict
more terrible than that of the day. Conde and Gaston were vainly summoned;
the one cared not, the other dared not. Mademoiselle again took her place
in her carriage and drove forth amid the terrors of the night. The sudden
conflict had passed its cruel climax, but she rode through streets
slippery with blood; she was stopped at every corner. Once a man laid his
arm on the window, and asked if Conde was within the carriage. She
answered "No," and he retreated, the flambeaux gleaming on a weapon
beneath his cloak. Through these interruptions, she did not reach the
half-burned and smoking Hotel de Ville till most of its inmates had left
it; the few remaining she aided to conceal, and emerged again amid the
lingering, yawning crowd, who cheered her with, "God bless Mademoiselle!
all she does is well done."

At four o'clock that morning she went to rest, weary with these days and
nights of responsibility. Sleep soundly, Mademoiselle, you will be
troubled with such no longer. An ignominious peace is at hand; and though
peace, too, has her victories, yours is not a nature grand enough to grasp
them. Last to yield, last to be forgiven, there will yet be little in your
future career to justify the distrust of despots, or to recall the young
heroine of Orleans and St Antoine.

IV.

THE CONCLUSION.

Like a river which loses itself, by infinite subdivision, in the sands, so
the wars of the Fronde disappeared in petty intrigues at last. As the
fighting ended and manoeuvring became the game, of course Mazarin came
uppermost,--Mazarin, that super-Italian, finessing and fascinating, so
deadly sweet, _l'homme plus agreable du monde_, as Madame de Motteville
and Bussy-Rabutin call him,--flattering that he might win, avaricious that
he might be magnificent, winning kings by jewelry and princesses by
lapdogs,--too cowardly for any avoidable collision,--too cool and
economical in his hatred to waste an antagonist by killing him, but always
luring and cajoling him into an unwilling tool,--too serenely careless of
popular emotion even to hate the mob of Paris, any more than a surgeon
hates his own lancet when it cuts him; he only changes