was beginning to lose patience, when the news of the victory of Lens restored courage to the court.  “Parliament will be very sorry,” said the little king, on hearing of the Prince of Conde’s success.  The grave assemblage, on the 26th of August, was issuing from Notre Dame, where a Te Deum had just been sung, when Councillor Broussel and President Blancmesnil were arrested in their houses, and taken one to St. Germain and the other to Vincennes.  This was a familiar proceeding on the part of royal authority in its disagreements with the Parliament.  Anne of Austria herself had practised it four years before.

[Illustration:  Arrest of Broussel——­352]

It was a mistake on the part of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin not to have considered the different condition of the public mind.  A suppressed excitement had for some months been hatching in Paris and in the provinces.  “The Parliament growled over the tariff-edict,” says Cardinal de Retz; “and no sooner had it muttered than everybody awoke.  People went groping as it were after the laws; they were no longer to be found.  Under the influence of this agitation the people entered the sanctuary and lifted the veil that ought always to conceal whatever can be said about the right of peoples and that of kings, which never accord so well as in silence.”  The arrest of Broussel, an old man in high esteem, very keen in his opposition to the court, was like fire to flax.  “There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a rush, an outcry, and a shutting up of shops.”  Paul de Gondi, known afterwards as Cardinal de Retz, was at that time coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, his uncle witty, debauched, bold, and restless, lately compromised in the plots of the Count of Soissons against Cardinal Richelieu, he owed his office to the queen, and “did not hesitate,” he says, “to repair to her, that he might stick to his duty above all things.”

[Illustration:  Cardinal de Retz——­352]

There was already a great tumult in the streets when he arrived at the Palais-Royal:  the people were shouting, “Broussel!  Broussel!” The coadjutor was accompanied by Marshal la Meilleraye; and both of them reported the excitement amongst the people.  The queen grew angry.  “There is revolt in imagining that there can be revolt,” she said:  “these are the ridiculous stories of those who desire it; the king’s authority will soon restore order.”  Then, as old M. de Guitaut, who had just come in, supported the coadjutor, and said that he did not understand how anybody could sleep in the state in which things were, the cardinal asked him, with some slight irony, “Well, M. de Guitaut, and what is your advice?” “My advice,” said Guitaut, “is to give up that old rascal of a Broussel, dead or alive.”  “The former,” replied the coadjutor, “would not accord with either the queen’s piety or her prudence; the latter might stop the tumult.”  At this word the queen blushed, and exclaimed, “I