About eleven o’clock we reached the Porte Banniere, and found it closed and barricaded.  The guards were called on to open to Mademoiselle d’Orleans Montpensier, the daughter of their lord; but all in vain, though she had not a soldier with her, and promised not to bring in either of the Dukes of Nemours or Beaufort.

We waited three hours.  Mademoiselle became tired of sitting in the carriage, and we went to a little inn, where we had something to eat, and, to our great amusement, the poor, perplexed Governor of the town sent her some sweetmeats, by way, I suppose, of showing his helpless good-will.  We then began to walk about the suburbs, and I though of the Battle of the Herrings and the Maid of Orleans, and wondered which was the gate by which she entered.  One of the gentlemen immediately complimented Mademoiselle on being a second Maid of Orleans, and pointed out the gate, called Le Port de Salut, as connected with the rescue of the place.  We saw the Marquis d’Allins looking out at the window of the guardroom, and Mademoiselle made signs to him to bring her the keys, and let her in, but he replied by his gestures that he could not.  The situation was a very strange one.  Mademoiselle, with her little suite of ladies, parading along the edge of the moat, vainly trying to obtain admission, while the women, children, and idlers of Orleans were peeping over the ramparts at us, shouting: 

‘Vive le Roi!  Vivent les Princes!  Point de Mazarin!’ and Mademoiselle was calling back:  ’Go to the town hall, call the magistrates, and fetch the keys!’ Nobody stirred, and at last we came to another gate, when the guard presented arms, and again Mademoiselle called to the captain to open.  With a low bow and a shrug, he replied:  ‘I have no keys.’

‘Break it down, then,’ she cried.  ’You owe more obedience to your master’s daughter than to the magistrates.’

He bowed.

The scene became more and more absurd; Mademoiselle began to threaten the poor man with arrest.

He bowed.

He should be degraded.

He bowed.

He should be drummed out of the service.

He bowed.

He should be shot.

He bowed.

We were choking with laughter, and trying to persuade her that threats were unworthy; but she said that kindness had no effect, and that she must now use threats, and that she knew she should succeed, for an astrologer had told her that everything she did between this Wednesday and Friday should prosper—­she had the prediction in her pocket.  By this time we had coasted along the moat till we came to the Loire, where a whole swarm of boatmen, honest fellows in red caps and striped shirts, came up, shouting, ‘Vive Monsieur!’ ’Vive Mademoiselle!’ and declaring that it was a shame to lock her out of her fathers own town.

She asked them to row her to the water-gate of La Faux, but they answered that there was an old wooden door close by which they could more easily break down.  She gave them money and bade them do so, and to encourage them climbed up a steep mound of earth close by all over bushes and briars, while poor Madame de Breaute stood shrieking below, and I scrambled after.