had
all who had displeased her hanged, and nevertheless she was very far
from all that."

Far enough, indeed. Paris was in the hands of her enemies, who were as
gay as the queen. On the 8th of January the Parliament of Paris decreed
Cardinal Mazarin an enemy to the king and the state, and bade all
subjects of the king to hunt him down. War was declared against the
queen regent and her favorite, the cardinal. Had it been the
States-General in place of the Parliament, the French Revolution might
have then and there begun.

Many of the greatest lords joined the side of the people. Troops were
levied in the city, their command being offered to the Prince of Conti.
The Parliaments of Aix and Rouen voted to support that of Paris. It was
decreed that all the royal funds, in the exchequers of the kingdom,
should be seized and used for the defence of the people. All was
festivity in the city. The versatile people seemed to imagine that to
declare war was to decree victory. There was dancing everywhere within
the walls. There was the rumble of war without. The Prince of Conde, at
the head of the king's troops, had taken the post of Charentin from the
Frondeurs, as the malcontents called themselves, and had carried out his
threat of checking the flow of bread to the city. The gay Parisians were
beginning to feel the inconvenience of hunger.

What followed is too long a story to be told here, except in bare
epitome. A truce was patched up between the contending parties. Bread
flowed again into Paris. The seared and hungry people grew courageous
and violent again when their appetites were satisfied. When M. Mole and
his fellows returned to Paris with a treaty of peace which they had
signed, the populace gathered round them in fury.

"None of your peace! None of your Mazarin!" they angrily shouted. "We
must go to St. Germain to seek our good king! We must fling into the
river all the Mazarins."

One of them laid his hand threateningly on President Mole's arm. The
latter looked him in the face calmly.

"When you have killed me," he said, quietly, "I shall only need six feet
of earth."

"You can get back to your house secretly by way of the record offices,"
whispered one of his companions.

"The court never hides itself," he composedly replied. "If I were
certain to perish, I would not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover,
would but give courage to the rioters. They would seek me in my house if
they thought I shrank from