The Counsellors were kept waiting two hours in the Great Gallery, while the mob roared outside, and the Cardinal, the Dukes of Orleans and Longueville, and other great nobles, argued the matter with the Queen.  The Cardinal was, it seems, in a terrible fright.  The Queen, full of Spanish pride and high courage, would really have rather perished than yielded to the populace; but Mazarin was more and more terrified, and at last she yielded, and consented to his going to the Counsellors to promise the release of the prisoners.  He was trembling all over, and made quite an absurd appearance, and presently the Parliament men appeared again, carrying huge sealed letters; Broussel’s was borne by his nephew in triumph.  We could hear the Vivas!  With which the people greeted them, as the promise of restoration was made known.  At eleven at night there was a fresh outcry, but this was of joy, for M. Blancmesnil had actually come back from Vincennes; but the barricades were not taken down.  There was to be no laying down of arms till Broussel appeared, and there were strange noises all night, preventing sleep.

At eight o’clock the next morning Broussel had not appeared; the people were walking about in a sullen rage, and this was made worse by a report that there were 10,000 soldiers in the Bois de Boulogne ready to chastise the people.  We could see from our house-top the glancing or arms at every barricade where the sun could penetrate, and in the midst came one of the servants announcing Monsieur Clement Darpent.

He had a sword by his side, and pistols at his belt, and he said that he was come to assure the ladies that there would be no danger for them.  If any one tried to meddle with the house, we might say we were friends of M. Darpent, and we should be secure.  If the account of the soldiers outside were true, the people were determined not to yield to such perfidy; but he did not greatly credit it, only it was well to be prepared.

‘Alas! my friend,’ said Eustace, ’this has all too much the air of rebellion.’

‘We stand on our rights and privileges,’ said Darpent.  ’We uphold them in the King’s name against the treachery of a Spanish woman and an Italian priest.’

‘You have been sorely tried,’ said Eustace; ’but I doubt me whether anything justifies taking arms against the Crown.’

‘Ah!  I am talking to a Cavalier,’ said Clement.  ’But I must not argue the point.  I must to my barricade.’

Nan here came forward, and desired him to carry her commendations and thanks to Madame sa mere, and he bowed, evidently much gratified.  She durst not go the length of offering her good wishes, and she told me I ought to have been thankful to her for the forbearance, when, under a strong sense of duty, I reproved her.  Technically he was only Maitre Darpent, and his mother only would have been called Mademoiselle.  Monsieur and Madame were much more jealously limited to nobility than they are now becoming, and the Darpents would not purchase a patent of nobility to shelter themselves from taxation.  For, as Eustace said, the bourgeoisie had its own chivalry of ideas.