But there was one danger more for Conde, one opportunity more for Mademoiselle, that day.  Climbing the neighboring towers of the Bastille, she watched the royal party on the heights of Charonne, and saw fresh cavalry and artillery detached to aid the army of Turenne.  The odds were already enormous, and there was but one course left for her.  She was mistress of Paris, and therefore mistress of the Bastille.  She sent for the governor of the fortress, and showed him the advancing troops.  “Turn the cannon under your charge, Sir, upon the royal army.”  Without waiting to heed the consternation she left behind her, Mademoiselle returned to the gate.  The troops had heard of the advancing reinforcements, and were drooping again; when, suddenly, the cannon of the Bastille, those Spanish cannon; flamed out their powerful succor, the royal army halted and retreated, and the day was won.

The Queen and the Cardinal, watching from Charonne, saw their victims escape them.  But the cannon-shots bewildered them all.  “It was probably a salute to Mademoiselle,” suggested some comforting adviser.  “No,” said the experienced Marechal de Villeroi, “if Mademoiselle had a hand in it, the salute was for us.”  At this, Mazarin comprehended the whole proceeding, and coldly consoled himself with a bon-mot that became historic.  “Elle a tue son mari,” he said,—­meaning that her dreams of matrimony with the young king must now be ended.  No matter; the battle of the Porte St. Antoine was ended also.

There have been many narratives of that battle, including Napoleon’s; they are hard to reconcile, and our heroine’s own is by no means the clearest; but all essentially agree in the part they ascribe to her.  One brief appendix to the campaign, and her short career of heroism fades into the light of common day.

Yet a third time did Fortune, showering upon one maiden so many opportunities at once, summon her to arm herself with her father’s authority, that she might go in his stead into that terrible riot which, two days after, tarnished the glories of Conde, and by its reaction overthrew the party of the Fronde ere long.  None but Mademoiselle dared to take the part of that doomed minority in the city government, which, for resisting her own demands, were to be terribly punished on that fourth-of-July night.  “A conspiracy so base,” said the generous Talon, “never stained the soil of France.”  By deliberate premeditation, an assault was made by five hundred disguised soldiers on the Parliament assembled in the Hotel de Ville; the tumult spread; the night rang with a civil conflict more terrible than that of the day.  Conde and Gaston were vainly summoned; the one cared not, the other dared not.  Mademoiselle again took her place in her carriage and drove forth amid the terrors of the night.  The sudden conflict had passed its cruel climax, but she rode through streets slippery with blood; she was stopped at every corner.  Once a man laid his arm on the window, and asked if