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Parisians and Frondeurs as they were, the two friends expected to find the same misery, the same fears, the same intrigue in the enemy's camp; but what was their surprise, after passing Saint Denis, to hear that at Saint Germain people were singing and laughing, and leading generally cheerful lives.
The draft of this projected treaty fell into the hands of Condé through the bearer of the paquet in which it was enclosed being in the service of the Marquis de Noirmoutier, and the Prince caused it to be printed in order to ventilate and bring to light the alliance between the Frondeurs, the Queen, and Mazarin.
Attentive to the study of his part, and to never accept a bad one, La Rochefoucauld says truly that the Frondeurs, eagerly pressing forwards the marriage of the Prince de Conti with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, and seeing it retarded, "suspected Madame de Longueville and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld of a design to break it off, for fear that the Prince de Conti should escape from their hands only to fall into those of Madame de Chevreuse and of the Coadjutor;" but he endeavours to give a reason for these suspicions, and to inform us whether they were well or ill founded.
It authorised the Frondeurs to speak against the Cardinal in parliament for some time forward in order to cover their secret understanding.
They bid me save the kingdom, save the city, or else I should fall from the greatest love to the greatest hatred of the people. The Frondeurs suspected me of favouring Mazarin's party, and the Mazarins thought I was too partial to the Frondeurs. I was touched to the quick with a pathetic speech made to me by M. de Fontenay.
Their hatred and contempt for the Cardinal made them too easily forget that the lowest faults do not prevent the higher orders of the empire from being defended by those to whom they have the honour to belong; that a Rohan, a Prince of the Church, however culpable he might be, would be sure to have a considerable party which would naturally be joined by all the discontented persons of the Court, and all the frondeurs of Paris.
My mother dragged me to Court as a matter of form, but I was unwelcome there, and was plainly shown that it was so. The Queen could not forgive me for being rescued by the Frondeurs; Mademoiselle was in the Prince's interest; the Prince was dominant, and all his satellites made it a point of honour that none of them should fail in carrying any point. Even Cecile d'Aubepine followed the stream.
It is all very well for these people to boast of their division of last night, but it was a surprise, and as great to them as to us. I know there is dissension in the camp; ever since that Finality speech of Lord John, there has been a smouldering sedition. Mr Tadpole knows all about it; he has liaisons with the frondeurs. This affair of Trenchard may do us the greatest possible injury.
Has his Royal Highness any regular troops to besiege Vincennes? And, granting the Frondeurs to be the greatest fools imaginable, will they expose the people of Paris at a siege which two thousand of the King's troops might raise in a quarter of an hour though it consist of a hundred thousand citizens? I therefore conclude that the removal would be altogether impolitic.
You see the state and condition the Frondeurs were in at this juncture, when they could not move one step but to their own disadvantage.
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