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After all my follies at Nid de Merle, I was quite sufficiently in ill odour with the Court to make it needful to be very careful. If I had only waited till morning, the Queen would have taken care to deliver me without my having given a triumph which the Frondeurs would not fail to make the most of. 'Where should I have been in the morning? I said.
We managed at last to fasten up the mattress with the other things in it, tied by a long scarf at each end, and dragging it to the top of the stairs we rolled it down each flight. At the second it upset at unfortunate lackey, who began to yell, firmly persuaded that it was a corpse, and that the Frondeurs had got in and were beginning a general slaughter.
After a while he sent a considerable number of officers disguised into Paris, who bestirred themselves in every quarter in his favour; and when he considered himself in a position to hold his own against both the Queen and the Frondeurs together, he quitted Saint-Maur and returned to his hôtel near the Palais d'Orléans, desiring to put a good complexion on the aspect of his affairs and to impose upon his enemies by that bold and high-minded conduct.
I was astonished when her Majesty trusted me with this secret, and imagined that the Cardinal had possessed her with a fear that the Frondeurs had a design to seize the person of the Prince de Conde. For my part, I never dreamed of such a thing in my life.
Beaufort waited on the Prince and was well received, but I could not gain admittance. On the 14th the Prince de Conde went to Parliament and demanded that a committee might be appointed to inquire into the attempt made on his life. The Frondeurs were not asleep in the meantime, yet most of our friends were dispirited, and all very weak.
The Cardinal, being puffed up with his success in settling the troubles of Guienne, thought of nothing else than crowning his triumph by chastising the Frondeurs, who, he said, had made use of the King's absence to alienate the Duc d'Orleans from his service, to encourage the revolt at Bordeaux, and to make themselves masters of the persons of the Princes.
The generality of the people, being Frondeurs, will conclude you take the Prince de Conde out of their hands, whom they look upon to be safe while they see him walking upon the battlements of his prison, and that you will give him his liberty when you please, and thus enable him to besiege Paris a second time.
The Queen, who equally detested the Prince de Condé and the Frondeurs, could scarcely conceal her joy at seeing them at daggers drawn with each other; feeling certain that the moment was at hand when their dissensions would restore her supremacy.
"Oh!" said D'Artagnan, "monseigneur knows very well that her majesty refuses him nothing." "Here, monseigneur," said Aramis, "is the treaty proposed by the deputation of Frondeurs. Will your eminence please read and examine?" "I am acquainted with it." "Sign it, then." "Reflect, gentlemen, that a signature given under circumstances like the present might be regarded as extorted by violence."
The recipient of the gift kept it, and regarded it as vastly more valuable than if it had been covered with gold and diamonds from another. September 7, 1651, was a memorable day in the annals of France, and if it was not marked by the popular rejoicings which had greeted the birth of the king, it was because the people were worn out by the war of the Frondeurs.
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