“MONSEIGNEUR:  Having understood from my cousin the Duke of Danville and from Sieur d’Aligre, the respect that your Majesty would have me pay you, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to allow me to assure you by these lines that I do not propose to remain in Paris longer than tillto-morrow; and that I will go my way to my house at Limours, having no more passionate desire than to testify by my perfect obedience that I am, with submission,

     “Monseigneur,
     “Your most humble and most obedient servant and subject,
     “GASTON.”

The Duke of Orleans retired before long to his castle at Blois, where he died in 1660; deserted, towards the end of his life, by all the friends he had successively abandoned and betrayed.  “He had, with the exception of courage, all that was necessary to make an honorable man,” says Cardinal de Retz, “but weakness was predominant in his heart through fear, and in his mind through irresolution; it disfigured the whole course of his life.  He engaged in everything because he had not strength to resist those who drew him on, and he always came out disgracefully, because he had not the courage to support them.”  He was a prey to fear, fear of his friends as well as of his enemies.

The Fronde was all over, that of the gentry of the long robe as well as that of the gentry of the sword.  The Parliament of Paris was once more falling in the state to the rank which had been assigned to it by Richelieu, and from which it had wanted to emerge by a supreme effort.  The attempt had been the same in France as in England, however different had been the success.  It was the same yearnings of patriotism and freedom, the same desire on the part of the country to take an active part in its own government, which had inspired the opposition of the Parliament of England to the despotism of Charles I., and the opposition of the French Parliaments to Richelieu as well as to Mazarin.  It was England’s good fortune to have but one Parliament of politicians, instead of ten Parliaments of magistrates, the latter more fit for the theory than the practice of public affairs; and the Reformation had, beforehand, accustomed its people to discussion as well as to liberty.  Its great lords and its gentlemen placed themselves from the first at the head of the national movement, demanding nothing and expecting nothing for themselves from the advantages they claimed for their country.  The remnant of the feudal system had succumbed with the Duke of Montmorency under Richelieu; France knew not the way to profit by the elements of courage, disinterestedness, and patriotism offered her by her magistracy; she had the misfortune to be delivered over to noisy factions of princes and great lords, ambitious or envious, greedy of honors and riches, as ready to fight the court as to be on terms with it, and thinking far more of their own personal interests than of the public service.  Without any unity