The high nobility had soon tired of order and obedience. Never was it more turbulent or more undisciplined than under Louis XIII. and in the minority of Louis XIV., but it must be noted as one of the signs of the times that it no longer carried its jaunty ease of conscience into its plots and its mutinies. Curious proofs of this fact are still in existence; the revolting princes and lords stoutly denied that they had taken arms against the King. If they had openly made war, and so palpably that they could not deny it, they invariably asserted with affirmations that they had done it "to render themselves useful to the King's service." Gaston d'Orléans gave the same reason for his conduct when he deserted France for a foreign country. All averred that they had been impelled to act by a determination to force the King to accept deliverance from humiliating tyranny, or from pernicious influences. During the Fronde, when men changed parties as freely as they changed their gloves, the rebels protested their fidelity to the King, and they did it because the idea of infidelity was abhorrent to them. No one in France would have admitted that it could be possible to hold personal interests or personal caprice above the interests of the State, and in the opinion of the French cavalier this would have been reason enough for any action; but there was a more practical reason; the descendants of the great barons were beginning to doubt their power to maintain the assertion of their so-called rights. By suggesting subjects for the meditations of all the people of France who could read or write _Astrée_ had contributed a novelty in scruples. In our day such a book as _Astrée_ would excite no interest; the reiteration of the "torrents of tenderness" to which it owed its sentimental influence would make it a doubtful investment for any publisher, and even the thoughtful reader would find its best pages difficult reading; but when all is said and done, it remains, and it shall remain, the book which best divines our perpetually recurring and eternal necessities.