[Illustration:  President Mole——­355]

“If it were not blasphemy to say that there was any one in our age more intrepid than the great Gustavus and the Prince, I should say it was M. Mole, premier president,” writes Cardinal de Retz.  Sincerely devoted to the public weal, and a magistrate to the very bottom of his soul, Mole, nevertheless, inclined towards the side of power, and understood better than his brethren the danger of factions.  He represented to the queen the extreme danger the sedition was causing to Paris and to France.  “She, who feared nothing because she knew but little, flew into a passion and answered, furiously, ’I am quite aware that there is disturbance in the city, but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament, you, your wives, and your children.’” “The queen was pleased,” says Mole, in his dignified language, “to signify in terms of wrath that the magisterial body should be answerable for the evils which might ensue, and which the king on reaching his majority would remember.”

The queen had retired to her room, slamming the door violently; the Parliament turned back to the Palace of Justice; the angry mob thronged about the magistrates; when they arrived at Rue St. Honore, just as they were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band of armed men fell upon them, “and a cookshop-lad, advancing at the head of two hundred men, thrust his halbert against the premier president’s stomach, saying, ’Turn, traitor, and, if thou wouldst not thyself be slain, give up to us Broussel, or Mazarin and the chancellor as hostages.’” Matthew Mole quietly put the weapon aside, and, “You forget yourself,” he said, “and are oblivious of the respect you owe to my office.”  “Thrice an effort was made.to thrust me into a private house,” says his account in his Memoires, “but I still kept my place; and, attempts having been made with swords and pistols on all sides of me to make an end of me, God would not permit it, some of the members (Messieurs) and some true friends having placed themselves in front of me.  I told President de Mesmes that there was no other plan but to return to the Palais-Royal and thither take back the body, which was much diminished in numbers, five of the presidents having dropped away, and also many of the members on whom the people had inflicted unworthy treatment.”  “Thus having given himself time to rally as many as he could of the body, and still preserving the dignity of the magistracy both in his words and in his movements, the premier president returned at a slow pace to the Palais-Royal, amidst a running fire of insults, threats, execrations, and blasphemies.” [Memoires de Retz.]