--the great nobles, the parliamentarians, and the
_bourgeoisie_; but, notwithstanding the dread of the common enemy, which
united them, those parties were of different origin and conditions of
existence, and consequently had different interests also. The great
nobles wished to exercise power by placing themselves above the law; the
parliament to increase its own through the law; the citizens to
establish theirs at the expense of the law: for in their eyes the law
was full of abuses and the royal power cruelly oppressive. All three
parties, in order to arrive at their several ends, had, therefore,
recourse to violence, or derived aid from it.

On the return of Madame de Longueville from Muenster, there was already a
ferment in the minds of the Parisians, of which the Regent took little
heed. The Fronde cabal was then brooding in the dark. When the
rebellion, formed by Gondi, broke out at last under the circumstances
just narrated, Madame de Longueville, alone of all the princesses of the
blood, did not accompany Anne of Austria in her flight to Rueil. The
Duchess strove her utmost to strengthen, by the concurrence of her
entire family, the faction whose fortunes she had embraced through
devotion to Marsillac. She did not, however, then succeed in detaching
Conde from the Regent's party. The battle of the barricades followed
close upon that of Lens, Conde's last victory. On his return, that
victorious young soldier found royalty humiliated, the Parliament
triumphing and dictating laws to the Crown; the Duke de Beaufort, with
whom he once thought of measuring swords in defence of the honour of his
sister, freed from his prison in Vincennes, and master of Paris by aid
of the populace who idolized him; the vain and fickle Abbe de Retz
transformed into a tribune of the people; the Prince de Conti into a
generalissimo; M. de Longueville under the guidance of his wife and La
Rochefoucauld; and the feeble Duke d'Orleans fancying himself almost a
King, because he saw the Queen humiliated, and because the Frondeurs,
cunningly flattering his self-love, were treating him like a sovereign.
Conde, at a glance, saw the situation of affairs and his duty also; and
without any hesitation he offered his sword to the Queen.

Brother and sister were, therefore, about to be arrayed against each
other in the strife of civil war, and a stormy explanation took place
between them. It is asserted that for some time back their reciprocal
tendernes