cannon shots have killed her husband.” Four months did not pass away before, tired of wasting their lives and properties in a contest which could benefit only the privileged classes, the Parisians invited the king to return to his capital. The monarch entered it on the 21st of October, 1652. The faction of the Fronde was annihilated, and its leaders were scattered in all directions; their vanity, selfishness, and utter want of principle and patriotism, deserved such a fate. Had they been animated by noble motives, had they possessed even a moderate share of wisdom and virtue, they might have laid the groundwork of a stable and beneficent government, and thereby saved their country from innumerable immediate and remote evils. But “The sensual and the base rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion!” As soon as the king had entered Paris, the Bastile was summoned, and La Louvière was informed that, if he were rash enough to stand a siege, the gibbet would be his portion. Too prudent to run so useless and formidable a risk, he readily gave up his charge. From the moment when Mademoiselle directed its fire upon the king’s troops, a hundred and thirty-seven years elapsed before the Bastile again heard the roar of artillery fired in anger. One of the first acts of Louis XIV. was to hold a bed of justice, in which he ordered the registration of an edict to abridge the power of the parliament. By this edict, the parliament was strictly prohibited from deliberating on state and financial affairs, and instituting any proceedings whatever against the ministers whom he might be pleased to employ. Louis was then only a boy of fourteen, and this act was of course the work of Mazarin; but, young as he was, the monarch was already thoroughly imbued with the principles on which it was framed. Three years afterwards he gave a striking proof of this. The parliament having ventured to manifest a faint opposition to some of his many oppressive fiscal edicts, he took a step which showed how deeply despotism was ingrained into his character. He was engaged in the chase, at Vincennes, when information was brought to him that his will was disputed. Hurrying back to Paris, he entered the parliament chamber, the sanctuary of justice, booted, spurred, whip in hand, and thus addressed the assembly of venerable magistrates: “Sirs, everybody knows the calamities which the meetings of the parliament have produced. I will henceforth prevent those meetings. I order you, therefore, to desist from those which you have begun, with respect to the edicts which, in my late bed of justice, I directed to be registered. You, Mr. First President, I forbid to allow of these assemblies; and I forbid every one of you to demand them.” Having thus spoken he departed, leaving his hearers in astonishment. He was then a beardless youth, who had not reached his seventeenth year. The members of the parliament might well have called to mind the words of