all sides, and bodies unburied. Those remaining alive pick
up from the fields the rotten oat-straw, and make bread of it by mixing
it with mud. Their faces are quite black; they have no longer the
semblance of human beings, but that of phantoms.... War has placed every
one on an equality; nobility lies upon straw, dares not beg, and
dies.... Even lizards are eaten, and dogs which have been dead perhaps
some eight days.... Moreover, in Picardy, a band of five hundred
children, orphans, and under seven years of age, was met with. In
Lorraine, the famished nuns quitted their convents and became
mendicants: the poor creatures gave themselves up to be dishonoured for
the sake of a morsel of bread. No pity, no remorse. An execrable and
sanguinary war upon the weak. In the heart of the city of Rheims, a
beautiful girl was chased from street to street for ten days by the
licentious soldiery; and as they could not catch her, they killed her by
shooting her down. In the vicinity of Angers, Alais, and Condom, upon
all the highways of Lorraine, women and children were indiscriminately
outraged, and left to die drenched in their blood."

[4] La Misere dans la Fronde.

What could be more _diverting_? The Duke de Lorraine--that restless
knight-errant who preferred amusing himself with civil war to the quiet
enjoyment of his throne--amused the noble ladies of his acquaintance
with a recital of these pleasant incidents; his gallant army, he said,
was quite a providence for the old women....

After further pursuing his appalling statistics of the misery and
horrors inflicted by the Fronde at a later date, M. Feillet
remarks:--"And yet, notwithstanding all this suffering, which we have
only cursorily sketched, at Court nothing else was thought of but fetes
and diversions; for the young and brilliant bevy of Mazarin's nieces had
come to increase the circle of beauties whom the youthful King and his
gay courtiers vied with each other in paying homage to, and
entertaining. The warm attachment of Louis for more than one of his
Minister's nieces, and especially Marie de Mancini, is well known. In
imitation of their Sovereign, the youthful nobility and a large portion
of the city gallants plunged into unrestrained dissipation--intervals of
licentiousness ever succeeding like periods of turbulence and anarchy.
Such heartless indifference to the sufferings of the people on the part
of the King and his Court evoked the following couplet, wh