o his own creatures at Metz
to seize the citadel, and to hold it for him against all other orders.

But at last even Mary had to refuse to lavish more of the national
treasure and to shred more of the national territory among these
magnates. Then came their rebellion.

Immediately Conde and several great nobles issued a proclamation
denouncing the tyranny and extravagance of the Court,--calling on
the Catholics to rise against the Regent in behalf of their
religion,--calling on the Protestants to rise in behalf of
theirs,--summoning the whole people to rise against the waste of their
State treasure.

It was all a glorious joke. To call on the Protestants was wondrous
impudence, for Conde had left their faith, and had persecuted them; to
call on the Catholics was not less impudent, for he had betrayed their
cause scores of times; but to call on the whole people to rise in
defence of their treasury was impudence sublime, for no man had besieged
the treasury more persistently, no man had dipped into it more deeply,
than Conde himself.

The people saw this and would not stir. Conde could rally only a few
great nobles and their retainers, and therefore, as a last tremendous
blow at the Court, he and his followers raised the cry that the Regent
must convoke the States-General.

Any who have read much in the history of France, and especially in the
history of the French Revolution, know, in part, how terrible this cry
was. By the Court, and by the great privileged classes of France, this
great assembly of the three estates of the realm was looked upon as the
last resort amid direst calamities. For at its summons came stalking
forth from the foul past the long train of Titanic abuses and Satanic
wrongs; then came surging up from the seething present the great hoarse
cry of the people; then loomed up, dim in the distance, vast shadowy
ideas of new truth and new right; and at the bare hint of these, all
that was proud in France trembled.

This cry for the States-General, then, brought the Regent to terms at
once, and, instead of acting vigorously, she betook herself to her old
vicious fashion of compromising,--buying off the rebels at prices more
enormous than ever. By her treaty of Sainte-Menehould, Conde received
half a million of livres, and his followers received payments
proportionate to the evil they had done.

But this compromise succeeded no better than previous compromises. Even
if the nobles had wished to remai