"You will either go or be carried!" he cried violently, and Mademoiselle, much the worse for her stratagem, was forced to yield. She deplored her fate, and wept because she had lost her father's sympathy. The reciprocal acidity of the junior branches was constantly manifested by fatalities like the event just noted, and by episodes like the affair of "the fallen letters" (August, 1643). Although all the writers of that day believed that the reaction of that puerile matter was felt in the Fronde, the quarrel, like all the other quarrels, was of so senseless a character that it awakened the shame of the nation. The story is soon told: Mme. de Montbazon picked up--no one knew where--some love letters in which, as she said, she recognised the writing of Mme. de Longueville. Her story was false, and Anne of Austria, who frowned upon the gossip and the jealousies of the Court, condemned Mme. Montbazon to go to the Hôtel de Condé and make apologies for the wrong that she had done the Princess. All the friends of the House of Condé were expected to be present to hear and to witness the vindication of Mme. la Princesse. Monsieur was there [wrote Mademoiselle], and for my part I could not stay away. I had no friendship for Mme. la Princesse, or for any of her friends, but on that occasion I could not have taken a part contrary to hers with decorum; to be present there was one of the duties of relationship which one cannot neglect. On that occasion the relatives of the family were all in the Hôtel de Condé, but their hearts were not in their protestations, and the Condés were not deceived. The petty scandal of the letters fed the flame of enmity, which Mazarin watched and nourished because he knew that it was to his interest and to the interest of the State to foment the quarrel between the rival cousins. An anonymous collection of "memoirs" says: Seeing that he was pressed from all sides, the Cardinal thought that the safety of his position required him to keep the House of Orleans separate from the House of Bourbon, so that by balancing one by the other he could remain firmly poised between the two and make himself equally necessary to both. It was as if Heaven itself had dropped the affair of the fallen letters into his hands, and he turned his celestial windfall to such account that the Luxembourg and the Hôtel de Bourbon found it difficult to maintain a decent composure; at heart they were at daggers' points. The Duc d'Orléans and the Duc d'Enghien were regarded as the chiefs of the two hostile parties, and the courtiers rallied to the side of either as their interests or their inclinations led them![117]