Under the great Cardinal de Richelieu, the Crown had taken more authority then ever, and raised taxes at its will.  The Parliament was only permitted to register the edicts of the Crown, but not to refuse them, as it claimed to do.  As nobody who was noble paid taxes the noblesse did not care, and there had hitherto seemed to be no redress.  But at this moment, when the war taxes were weighing more heavily than ever, and the demand of a house-tax had irritated the people of Paris, there were a very large number of the nobility much incensed against Cardinal Mazarin, and very jealous of his favour with the Queen-Regent.  What they would endure from a French nobleman like Richelieu they abhorred from a low-born foreigner such Mazarin was; and it seemed to the Parliament that this was the moment to make a stand, since they had the populace on their side, and likewise so many of the Court party.  There was the Archbishop of Corinth, the Coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris, who had been mortally offended by the way in which the Queen had treated him on the day of the barricades; there was the handsome, fair-haired Duke of Beaufort, a grandson of Henri IV., who used to be called ‘Le roi des halles,’ he was such a favourite with the market-women; there was the clever brilliant Prince de Marsillac (you know will his maxims, written after he had become Duke of Rochefoucauld).  He could do anything with Madame de Longueville; and she was thought able to do anything with her brothers, the Prince of Code and Conti.  Every one had been watching to see what side the Prince would take, but at this time he seemed inclined to the Crown, though it was not likely he could go on long without quarrelling with Mazarin.  All this made the Frondeurs hope much from beginning to resist; but I remember Sir Andrew said that he did not believe that these nobles and princes cared in the least for relieving the people, but merely for overthrowing the Cardinal, and he could not find out that the Parliament had any definite scheme, or knew what they wished.  In fact, Sir Andrew dreaded any movement.  He had been so much disappointed, and so broken-hearted at the loss of friends and the ruin of the country, that his only thought was to leave all alone.  And above all he so thought, when every letter from England told how the enemy were proceeding to hunt down his Sacred Majesty.

What a change it was when my son and I had to go into waiting at the Louvre!  Before the Queen-Regent there was nothing but vituperation of the Parliament, but the Duke of Orleans hates the Cardinal quite as much as the Parisians did; and his daughter, Mademoiselle, wanted him to lead the Frondeuse, and chatted to me of her plan of leading the party, together with the Prince of Conde, whom she eagerly desired to marry if his poor wife could be divorced.  I used to shake my head at her and say I knew she was too good at the bottom to desire anything so shocking, and she took it in good part.  She was much better than she chose to seem.