‘We thought ourselves rid of them,’ said my mother, ’we began to breathe again, and I was coming home, but, bah!  No such thing!  They are all coming back, thirty or forty thousand of them, only without their weapons.  At least the gentlemen said so, but I am sure they had them hidden.  Up comes M. Le Coadjuteur again, the Marshal de Meileraye leading him by the hand up the Queen, and saying:  ’Here, Madame, is one to whom I owe my life, but to whom your Majesty owes the safety of the State, nay, perhaps of the palace.’’

The Queen smiled, seeing through it all, said my mother, and the Coadjutor broke in:  ’The matter is not myself, Madame, it is Paris, now disarmed and submissive, at your Majesty’s feet.’

‘It is very guilty, and far from submissive,’ said the Queen angrily; ‘pray, if it were so furious, how can it have been so rapidly tamed?’ And then M. de Meilleraye must needs break in furiously:  ’Madame, an honest man cannot dissemble the state of things.  If Broussel is not set at liberty, tomorrow there will not be one stone upon another at Paris.’

But the Queen was firm, and put them both down, only saying:  ’Go and rest, Monsieur, you have worked hard.’

‘Was that all the thanks he had?’ exclaimed Annora.

’Of course it was, child.  The Queen and Cardinal knew very well that the tumult was his work; or at least immensely exaggerated by him, just to terrify her into releasing that factious old mischief-maker!  Why, he went off I know not where, haranguing them from the top of his carriage!’

‘Ah! that was where we saw him,’ said Nan.  ’Madame, indeed there was nothing exaggerated in the tumult.  It was frightful.  They made ten times the noise our honest folk do in England, and did ten times less.  If they had been English, M. Broussel would be safe at home now!’

‘No the tumult was not over-painted, that I can testify,’ said my brother.

But when my mother came to hear how he and Annora had witnessed the scene from the windows of M. Darpent’s house, her indignation knew no bounds.  I never saw her so angry with Eustace as she now was, that he should have taken his sister into the house of one of these councillors; a bourgeois house was bad enough, but that it should have been actually one of the disaffected, and that the Darpent carriage should have been seen at our door, filled her with horror.  It was enough to ruin us all for ever with the Court.

‘What have we to do with the Court?’ cried my sister, and this, of course, only added fuel to the flame, till at last my mother came to declaring that she should never trust her daughter with my brother again, for he was not fit to take care of her.

But we were all surprised by Eustace, when he bade my mother good-night, quietly bending his dark curled head, ad saying:  ’My mother, I ask your pardon, I am sorry I offended you.’

‘My son, my dear son,’ she cried, embracing him.  ’Never think of it more, only if we never go home, I cannot have your sister made a mere bourgeoise’