Many of the greatest lords joined the side of the people. Troops were levied in the city, their command being offered to the Prince of Conti. The Parliaments of Aix and Rouen voted to support that of Paris. It was decreed that all the royal funds, in the exchequers of the kingdom, should be seized and used for the defence of the people. All was festivity in the city. The versatile people seemed to imagine that to declare war was to decree victory. There was dancing everywhere within the walls. There was the rumble of war without. The Prince of Conde, at the head of the king's troops, had taken the post of Charentin from the Frondeurs, as the malcontents called themselves, and had carried out his threat of checking the flow of bread to the city. The gay Parisians were beginning to feel the inconvenience of hunger. What followed is too long a story to be told here, except in bare epitome. A truce was patched up between the contending parties. Bread flowed again into Paris. The seared and hungry people grew courageous and violent again when their appetites were satisfied. When M. Mole and his fellows returned to Paris with a treaty of peace which they had signed, the populace gathered round them in fury. "None of your peace! None of your Mazarin!" they angrily shouted. "We must go to St. Germain to seek our good king! We must fling into the river all the Mazarins." One of them laid his hand threateningly on President Mole's arm. The latter looked him in the face calmly. "When you have killed me," he said, quietly, "I shall only need six feet of earth." "You can get back to your house secretly by way of the record offices," whispered one of his companions. "The court never hides itself," he composedly replied. "If I were certain to perish, I would not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover, would but give courage to the rioters. They would seek me in my house if they thought I shrank from them here." M. Mole was a man of courage. To face a mob is at times more dangerous than to face an army. Paris was in disorder. The agitation was spreading all over France. But the army was faithful to the king, and without it the Fronde was powerless. The outbreak had ended in a treaty of peace and amnesty in which the Parliament had in a measure won, as it had preserved all its rights and privileges. It was to be a short peace. Conde, elated by having beaten the Fronde, claimed a lion's share in the government. His brother, the Prince of Conti, and his sister, the Duchess of Longueville, joined him in these pretensions. The affair ended in a bold step on the part of Mazarin and the queen. The two princes and M. de Longueville were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes, while the princesses were ordered to retire to their estates, and the Duchess of Longueville, fearing arrest, fled in haste to Normandy.