where it was needed for his purposes, had gone on taxing till he raised the devil in the _then_ much enduring people. Everything was ready for an outbreak. The _Te Deum_ after the victory of Lens gave the signal for it. It was a burning day in August, in the year 1648. The city had turned out to join in the jubilee, and, amidst the inspiriting chorus of trumpets, and cannons, and bells that sent exulting chimes from many belfries, such small matters as hunger and empty hearths and misery in its multiform moods and tenses were forgotten for a moment. But it needed only a touch to rouse the sleeping furies in the hearts of the hungry, rejoicing crowd. Broussel was seized by the troops, who had just played their part in the gay thanksgiving, and carried off to prison—Broussel, the venerable magistrate, the people’s sturdy friend; who had fought their battles over and over again against mighty Mazarin himself; who had stood by them and upheld their rights in the teeth of the foreign queen and her foreign minister; Broussel, whom the people called _notre père_—were they going to see him seized by soldiers, and carried off before their eyes? No; they would stand by him as he had stood by them. The last notes of the _Te Deum_ were still ringing over the city, when up leaped the shouts of revolution and the cry “To arms!” and chased away their holy echoes. The mob surrounded the carriage in which Broussel was placed, guarded on all sides by armed men; they were beaten back and trodden down; the people returned to the charge undaunted, and finally bore down on the Palais Royal, vociferating unmannerly threats, and demanding Broussel: “Give us Broussel, or we will burn down your house about you!”—pleasant sounds for the queen to hear beneath her windows! Anne of Austria had not foreseen this bursting up of the vulgar depths over which she had hitherto ridden in safe and scornful unconcern; nor, in all probability, had Mazarin. He was with the queen in that sumptuous apartment called the queen’s boudoir, whose one broad window, mounted in a frame of massive silver wrought like a brooch, looked out upon the court; the regent paced the room in feverish excitement, her face flushed, her hands, alternately crossed on her breast with an air of stern resolve, moving in the animated and expressive play that was familiar to her; every now and then she would stand in the embrasure of the rich and cunningly carved window, and cast a glance of mingled scorn and defiance on the vociferous rabble below. They catch sight of her, and greet her with ominous signs and gestures. They see in her cool courage a taunt that rouses them to desperation. All unarmed as they are, except with stones and sticks and such like unmilitary weapons, they are ready to give battle to her troops. At this crisis, when the Fronde was born, a young man named Gondi starts to the surface, shooting up from the dark horizon like a glittering rocket.