There was more sense in taking the Duke of Bouillon, though he was not his brother, M. de Turenne.  These young men were in high spirits.  You will find no traces of their feelings in the memoirs of the time, for of course nothing of the kind would be allowed to pass the censors of the press.  But there was a wonderful sense of liberty of speech and tongue during that siege.  The younger gens de la robe, as they were called, who, like Clement Darpent, had read their Livy and Plutarch, were full of ideas of public virtue, and had meetings among themselves, where M. Darpent dwelt on what he had imbibed from my brother of English notions of duty to God, the King and the State.  It may seem strange that a cavalier family like ourselves should have infused notions which were declared to smack of revolution, but the constitution we had loved and fought for was a very Utopia to these young French advocates.  They, with the sanguine dreams of youth, hoped that the Fronde was the beginning of a better state of things, when all offices should be obtained by merit, never bought and sold, and many of them were inventions of the Court for the express purpose of sale.  The great Cardinal had actually created forty offices for counselors merely in order to sell them and their reversions!  The holders of these were universally laughed at, and not treated as on a level with the old hereditary office-bearers, who at least might think themselves of some use.

We smile sadly now to think of the grand aspirations, noble visions, and brave words of those young advocates, each of whom thought himself a very Epaminondas, or Gracchus, though M. Darpent, on looking back, had to confess that his most enthusiastic supporters were among the younger brothers, or those with less fortunate fathers, for whom the Paulette had never been paid, or who felt it very hard to raise.  He himself brought sincere ardour for his own part, and was full of soaring hope and self-devotion, though I suspect his father would soon have silenced him if the poor man had been able to think of anything beyond his own sick-chamber.

The real absurdity, or rather the sadness, of it was, as we two saw, that the fine folk in whom the Parliament put its trust merely wanted to spite the Cardinal, and cared not a rush for the Parliament, unlike my Lord Essex, and our other Roundhead noblemen, who, right or wrong, were in honest earnest, and cared as much about the Bill of Rights and all the rest of their demands as Sir Harry Vane or General Cromwell himself, whereas these were traitors in heart to the cause they pretended to espouse.  Even the Coadjutor, who was the prime mover of all, only wanted to be chief of a party.

One part of his comedy, which I should like to have seen, was the conducting the Duchesses of Longueville and Bouillon along the Greve to the Hotel de Ville to ask protection, though I do not know what for.

However, there they were, exquisitely dressed, with Madame de Longueville’s beautiful hair daintily disheveled, on foot, and each with a child in her arms.  Crowds followed them with shouts of ecstasy, and the Coadjutor further gratified the world by having a shower of pistoles thrown from the windows of the Hotel de Ville.