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They had all been more or less fellow-sufferers with Anne of Austria during the period of her affliction and persecution by Richelieu, and from the commencement of her Regency, these returning exiles and liberated prisoners had been gathering round her until at last, formed into a faction, they gave themselves out as the Queen's party, and by adopting a high-flown, turgid, and mysterious style of phraseology, and assuming bombastic and braggart airs of authority, coupled with an affectation of capacity and profundity, obtained for themselves from the wits of the Court and city the nickname of The Importants, under which they figured until absorbed a few years later in the more general and popular designation of Frondeurs.
If Anne of Austria had even consented to dismiss her favourite Minister, and overcome her repugnance to the Fronde and the Frondeurs, she could not have formed a government with the chiefs of that party. The Duke de Beaufort, its nominal head, lacked both instruction and intelligence.
In the course of a week, the portress, not seeing me again, might suppose me to be what I am not. So, one evening this day week at seven o'clock, go out quietly and get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the bottom of the Rue des Frondeurs. During this week avoid Lucien, find excuses, have him sent from the door, and if he should come in, go up to some friend's room.
I will maintain, further, that there is less reason to fear the Duc d'Orleans and the Frondeurs than to dread the Spaniards. Suppose that his Royal Highness is more disaffected towards the Court than anybody; suppose further that M. de Beaufort and I have a mind to relieve the Princes, in what way could we do it? Is not the whole garrison in that castle in the King's service?
Aramis could not in his jealousy avoid being pleased at the coadjutor's misfortune, and was about to utter some bon mot more witty than correct, when Athos stopped him. "On, on!" he cried, "this is no moment for compliments; or rather, back, for the battle seems to be lost by the Frondeurs."
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.
The very name was undignified, being derived from a kind of sling used by the urchins of the Paris streets. It was a mere series of brawls between Frondeurs and Mazarins, and brought much humiliation to the State. In 1649, civil war began which withdrew France somewhat from European broils.
So they have picked up the word and the insurrectionists are called 'Frondeurs, and yesterday every article sold was 'a la Fronde; bread 'a la Fronde, hats 'a la Fronde, to say nothing of gloves, pocket-handkerchiefs, and fans; but listen " At that moment a window opened and a man began to sing: "A tempest from the Fronde Did blow to-day: I think 'twill blow Sieur Mazarin away."
Mazarine's life is menaced; the queen-mother and the young king are virtually prisoners of the Frondeurs.
The hall was filled with ladies preparing to dance, the troops were drawn up in the square, and this mixture of blue scarves and ladies, cuirasses and violins and trumpets, formed, says De Retz, a spectacle much more common in romances than anywhere else. The serio-grotesque drama of the Fronde was thus initiated. THIS first raising of bucklers by the Frondeurs was not of long duration.
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