“With two lines of a man’s writing,” had said Mazarin’s great predecessor, “I could condemn him”; and with two lines of that magical pen of the Count de la Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville became another woman. As in the matter of her warm attachment to her lover, she was constant in her politics; while Louis de Condé, all-conquering at Rocroi, yielded himself captive to the charms of Ninon de L’Enclos—a veritable lion in love; not so blindly, however, that he was insensible to the wrongs of the people, upon whom a tax had been levied of a specially hateful kind. It was called the Toisé, and was a revival of an old edict long fallen into desuetude. To the Italian, d’Eméri, to whom Mazarin had entrusted the control of public finances, was due its discovery and resuscitation. This edict forbade the enlargement of the borders of Paris, and as recently new buildings had been, and were being, in course of construction far and wide, the owners of these were threatened with confiscation of their materials, unless they consented to pay for their newly-erected houses and other buildings, a rate regulated by measurement of the size of them. This pressed cruelly on the people. Loud murmurs were excited. The Parliament expostulated, and the Toisé was withdrawn. It was the first stone slung by the Fronde. Condé’s indignation was great; and one day, in the rue St Antoine, he laid flat with his sword the body of some wretched collector who had snatched away a child’s cradle from a poor woman. His act gave great offence to the queen, who saw in it defiance of Mazarin. Both at home and abroad, there was plenty stirring to keep existence from stagnating; but for a few brief delightful weeks the Duc d’Enghien sought retirement and tranquillity in his château of Petit Chantilly, in company with Ninon, who left the rue des Tournelles dwelling to take care of itself. It was the iniquitous Toisé which broke in upon their content; for the queen sent for the duke, to consult him in the emergency created by the cardinal favourite.