and, answering gravely, as if in his judgment-seat, said, "If you kill me, all my needs will be six feet of earth": he strode on with calm self-possession, amid a shower of missiles and threats, to the hall of St. Louis. The echo of Cromwell's triumph in England, however, seemed to have reached the Palais Royal, and the queen-regent was at length induced to treat. The demands of the people were granted and Broussel was liberated, amid scenes of tumultuous joy. In February of the next year the regency made an effort to reassert its authority. The queen and the royal princes left Paris for the palace of St. Germain and gathered an army under Condé: the Parlement taxed themselves heavily, tried their hands at organising a citizen militia, and allied themselves with the popular Duke of Beaufort, now at liberty, and leader of a troop of brilliant but giddy young nobles. The Bastille was captured by the Parlement, and the university promised its support and a subsidy. This was the origin of the civil war of the Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history; its name is derived from the puerile street fights with slings of the printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the _Portes Cochères_, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house with a carriage gate, became the derision of the royal army. They issued forth, beplumed and beribboned, and fled back to the city, amid the execrations of the people, at the sight of a handful of troops. Every defeat--and the Parisians were always defeated--formed a subject for songs and mockery. Councils of war were held in taverns, and De Retz was seen at a sitting of the Parlement in the hall of St. Louis with a poignard sticking out of his pocket: "There is the archbishop's prayer-book," said the people. The more public-spirited members of the Parlement soon, however, tired of the folly. Mazarin won over De Retz by the offer of a cardinal's hat, and a compromise was effected with the court, which returned to Paris in April 1649. The people were still bitter against Mazarin, and invaded the Palais de Justice, demanding the cardinal's signature to the treaty, that it might be burned by the common hangman.