n of the lowest dregs
of the people was seen rapidly advancing, casting toward heaven and
the Louvre strange vociferations. Girls carried long swords; children
dragged great halberds and pikes of the time of the League; old women in
rags pulled by cords old carts full of rusty and broken arms; workmen
of every trade, the greater number drunk, followed, armed with clubs,
forks, lances, shovels, torches, stakes, crooks, levers, sabres, and
spits. They sang and howled alternately, counterfeiting with atrocious
yells the cries of a cat, and carrying as a flag one of these animals
suspended from a pole and wrapped in a red rag, thus representing the
Cardinal, whose taste for cats was generally known. Public criers rushed
about, red and breathless, throwing on the pavement and sticking up
on the parapets, the posts, the walls of the houses, and even on the
palace, long satires in short stanzas upon the personages of the time.
Butcher-boys and scullions, carrying large cutlasses, beat the charge
upon saucepans, and dragged in the mud a newly slaughtered pig, with the
red cap of a chorister on its head. Young and vigorous men, dressed
as women, and painted with a coarse vermilion, were yelling, "We are
mothers of families ruined by Richelieu! Death to the Cardinal!" They
carried in their arms figures of straw that looked like children, which
they threw into the river.

When this disgusting mob overran the quays with its thousands of imps,
it produced a strange effect upon the combatants, and entirely contrary
to that expected by their patron. The enemies on both sides lowered
their arms and separated. Those of Monsieur and Cinq-Mars were revolted
at seeing themselves succored by such auxiliaries, and, themselves
aiding the Cardinal's gentlemen to remount their horses and to gain
their carriages, and their valets to convey the wounded to them, gave
their adversaries personal rendezvous to terminate their quarrel upon a
ground more secret and more worthy of them. Ashamed of the superiority
of numbers and the ignoble troops which they seemed to command,
foreseeing, perhaps, for the first time the fearful consequences of
their political machinations, and what was the scum they were stirring
up, they withdrew, drawing their large hats over their eyes, throwing
their cloaks over their shoulders, and avoiding the daylight.

"You have spoiled all, my dear Abbe, with this mob," said Fontrailles,
stamping his foot, to Gondi, who was alr