sompierre, believed themselves to be absolutely in favour, because they were no longer either prisoners or exiles. The Parlement, delivered from the Cardinal de Richelieu, who had kept it at a very low ebb, imagined that the age of gold must be that of a minister who told them every day that the queen would be guided only by their counsels.
But this contemptible and temporizing policy could not succeed forever. Posts promised to doubtful friends were treacherously bestowed to mollify certain enemies; no favour was granted without some pecuniary equivalent being wrung from the recipient; every man's pride was outraged by the sense of being befooled, and sullen murmurs swelled into howls of execration from every class of the community. There was no lion's hide beneath the fox's skin. Mazarin was a coward; when cunning failed him, he was lost and had to yield; he never dared to boldly dare his foes, and, conscious of his impotence, foes soon began to swarm around him in ever increasing numbers.
During "the fair days" Anne had emptied the treasure in bestowing largesses upon her friends; the effects of an empty exchequer soon began to be felt: magistrates, governors of towns and fortresses, officers, and even soldiers were unpaid, and but for loans from the commanders of the army it would have been impossible to have sustained the war then raging. The finances were under the superintendence of Emery, a name which his contemporaries have sent down to posterity loaded with execrations. Bussy Rabutin describes him as "harsh, proud, clever, intelligent in matters of business, ingenious in the creation of new subsidies to provide for the expenses of the war; he exercised a rigorous inquisition upon property of all kinds, and was never tired of trampling upon the subjects of the king." He had a difficult task to perform, and he performed it iniquitously; he created new offices of the, most extraordinary character, such as the comptroller of faggots, the criers of wine of the king's counsellors, and sold them to the highest bidders; he plundered the public funds, and granted the most infamous monopolies of public food. In 1548 there had been passed a law for limiting the growth of the capital within certain bounds, and this toisé, as it was called, he now revived, exacting from those who had built beyond the prescribed limits a heavy fine to redeem their property from demolition; the people rose in riot against the surveyors, who could carry out their orders only under the protection of a body of troops. This oppression was succeeded by another still worse — a new and exorbitant tariff upon all articles of food brought into Paris. The outcry of the people aroused the spirit of the Parlement, which had been crushed by Richelieu and cajoled by Mazarin, and it refused to verify the edict without certain modifications. Too timid to force an open rupture, Mazarin withdrew the tariff, but through his agent Emery revived a number of ancient imposts, which, although obsolete, having been sanctioned by former Parlements, could not be rejected. Six new edicts, however, which the king placed before Parlement at the opening of the year 1648 were so violently opposed that Mazarin, in an access of cowardly fear, yielded everything. Perceiving its own power and the weakness of the minister, the legislative assembly from that time took the upper hand, disputing even the just and reasonable demands of the government; the provincial Parlements followed the example of the metropolitan; De Retz was stirring the people to revolt, and, to culminate the confusion, the leader of the Importants, De Beaufort, was suffered to make his escape from Vincennes. Ere the disturbances assumed dangerous proportions, Mazarin, the queen, together with the young king, contrived to get out of Paris and take shelter at Saint-Germain. As I have described the Fronde period in a previous article,[1] I shall pass it over here with brief notice; indeed, throughout that memorable struggle Mazarin was a passive rather than an active person, a quintain at which all parties tilted; De Retz was the real hero of the civil war, and after him Condé and Beaufort, Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Longueville, played the principal parts. A full description of the innumerable and tortuous intrigues of this extraordinary revolt would fill a whole number of the magazine, would prove exceedingly dull to the general reader, and would throw very little additional light upon Mazarin's character; his policy throughout was but a repetition of that which had gone before — it was false, temporizing, and cowardly. Three times was he obliged to quit Paris, and twice the kingdom, to save his life; once the Parlement declared him guilty of high treason, placed him beyond the pale of the law, and commanded all persons to put him to death wherever he might be found, offering one hundred and fifty thousand
