Conde was within the carriage.  She answered “No,” and he retreated, the flambeaux gleaming on a weapon beneath his cloak.  Through these interruptions, she did not reach the half-burned and smoking Hotel de Ville till most of its inmates had left it; the few remaining she aided to conceal, and emerged again amid the lingering, yawning crowd, who cheered her with, “God bless Mademoiselle! all she does is well done.”

At four o’clock that morning she went to rest, weary with these days and nights of responsibility.  Sleep soundly, Mademoiselle, you will be troubled with such no longer.  An ignominious peace is at hand; and though peace, too, has her victories, yours is not a nature grand enough to grasp them.  Last to yield, last to be forgiven, there will yet be little in your future career to justify the distrust of despots, or to recall the young heroine of Orleans and St Antoine.

IV.

THE CONCLUSION.

Like a river which loses itself, by infinite subdivision, in the sands, so the wars of the Fronde disappeared in petty intrigues at last.  As the fighting ended and manoeuvring became the game, of course Mazarin came uppermost,—­Mazarin, that super-Italian, finessing and fascinating, so deadly sweet, l’homme plus agreable du monde, as Madame de Motteville and Bussy-Rabutin call him,—­flattering that he might win, avaricious that he might be magnificent, winning kings by jewelry and princesses by lapdogs,—­too cowardly for any avoidable collision,—­too cool and economical in his hatred to waste an antagonist by killing him, but always luring and cajoling him into an unwilling tool,—­too serenely careless of popular emotion even to hate the mob of Paris, any more than a surgeon hates his own lancet when it cuts him; he only changes his grasp and holds it more cautiously.  Mazarin ruled.  And the King was soon joking over the fight at the Porte St. Antoine, with Conde and Mademoiselle; the Queen at the same time affectionately assuring our heroine, that, if she could have got at her on that day, she would certainly have strangled her, but that, since it was past, she would love her as ever,—­as ever; while Mademoiselle, not to be outdone, lies like a Frenchwoman, and assures the Queen that really she did not mean to be so naughty, but “she was with those who induced her to act against her sense of duty!”

The day of civil war was over.  The daring heroines and voluptuous blonde beauties of the Frondeur party must seek excitement elsewhere.  Some looked for it in literature; for the female education of France in that age was far higher than England could show.  The intellectual glory of the reign of the Grand Monarque began in its women.  Marie de Medicis had imported the Italian grace and wit,—­Anne of Austria the Spanish courtesy and romance; the Hotel de Rambouillet had united the two, and introduced the genre precieux, or stately style, which was superb in its origin, and