of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples that came to them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither people nor army; the English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen’s fidelity to her minister.  In vain did the coadjutor aspire to take his place; Anne of Austria had not forgotten the Earl of Strafford.—­Cardinal de Retz learned before long the hollowness of his hopes.  On the 19th of December, 1652, as he was repairing to the Louvre, he was arrested by M. de Villequier, captain of the guards on duty, and taken the same evening to the Bois de Vincennes; there was a great display of force in the street and around the carriage; but nobody moved, whether it were,” says Retz, “that the dejection of the people was too great, or that those who were well-inclined towards me lost courage on seeing nobody at their head.”  People were tired of raising barricades and hounding down the king’s soldiers.

“I was taken into a large room where there were neither hangings nor bed; that which was brought in about eleven o’clock at night was of Chinese taffeta, not at all the thing for winter furniture.  I slept very well, which must not be attributed to stout-heartedness, because misfortune has naturally that effect upon me.  I have on more than one occasion discovered that it wakes me in the morning and sends me to sleep at night.  I was obliged to get up the next day without a fire, because there was no wood to make one, and the three exons who had been posted near me had the kindness to assure me that I should not be without it the next day.  He who remained alone on guard over me took it for himself, and I was a whole fortnight, at Christmas, in a room as big as a church, without warming myself.  I do not believe that there could be found under heaven another man like this exon.  He stole my linen, my clothes, my boots, and I was sometimes obliged to stay in bed eight or ten days for lack of anything to put on.  I could not believe that I was subjected to such treatment without orders from some superior, and without some mad notion of making me die of vexation.  I fortified myself against that notion, and I resolved at any rate not to die that kind of death.  At last I got him into the habit of not tormenting me any more, by dint of letting him see that I did not torment myself at all.  In point of fact I had risen pretty nearly superior to all these ruses, for which I had a supreme contempt; but I could not assume the same loftiness of spirit in respect of the prison’s entity (substance), if one may use the term, and the sight of myself, every morning when I awoke, in the hands of my enemies made me perceive that I was anything rather than a stoic.”  The Archbishop of Paris had just died, and the dignity passed to his coadjutor; as the price of his release, Mazarin demanded