He left her presence, and carried his perplexity to Mazarin. But Mazarin, who had led him into the dilemma of playing false to the people and vexing the queen, coldly declined interfering, and bowed the unsuccessful diplomatist out. Gondi, betrayed and baffled, left the Palais Royal with an oath that the morrow would see him master of Paris. When a lad of eighteen, he had written an essay on the _Conjuration de Fiesque_, which drew from Richelieu the remark: “_Voilà un esprit dangereux._”[43] The day had come when the fiery young author was to fulfil this sagacious prophecy. The future Cardinal de Retz had entered the Palais Royal an ambitious courtier: he left it an infuriated _frondeur_. The next day Paris was bristling with barricades—its traditional mode of expressing its irritated feelings. This day, famous as _la journée des barricades_, saw Mathieu Molé appear in one of the finest attitudes that have marked his noble and honorable career. While still young, Molé had risen to the brilliant and perilous position of _Premier Président du Parlement de Paris_ by the mere force of talent and rigid integrity of character; he had never courted the patronage of a minister, nor accepted a favor from one; he had lent no base compliance to Richelieu’s despotism or to Mazarin’s more captivating rule; he had remained the staunch friend of the heterodox Abbé de St. Cyran, holding faster by him in his disgrace and imprisonment than in the days of his transient popularity, persecuting Richelieu to obtain his pardon, dodging the inaccessible minister late and early, waylaying him in all possible and impossible places with the same persistent cry, “Give me back my friend St. Cyran,” till at last Richelieu, worn out with his importunity, seized the president by the arm one day, and said: “This M. Molé is a worthy magistrate, but the most obstinate pleader in France,” and gave him back his Abbé de St. Cyran. This was the man who was chosen to head a second embassy from the people to the Palais Royal. The regent was aware of his coming, and received him with cold civility; but her high spirit was slightly subdued since the preceding day; she had passed a sleepless night waiting for the events of the morrow, and was disposed to admit the possibility of coming to a compromise with her unruly citizens. Mathieu Molé was not an orator in the classical sense of the word, but he had that sort of eloquence that stirs the hearts of men. It achieved a victory, in the first place, over the angry mob by making them listen to reason and take a dispassionate view of their position, and now it gained an equally important one with the regent, inducing her to yield a reluctant consent to the liberation of Broussel. The barricades were lowered, and Paris gave a joyous welcome to its friend. But the blaze thus rashly kindled was not to be so quickly quenched. Anne of Austria eventually conquered both the Fronde and the less violent but