"A striking proof of the manner in which events deceive men as to their results is afforded by the fact that the imprisonment of the three princes, which seemed likely to calm the factions, actually excited them to fever heat. The mother of the Prince de Condé, although exiled, remained in Paris, despite the court, and presented petition after petition to the Parliament. His wife, after passing through innumerable dangers, took refuge in the city of Bordeaux; with the assistance of the Ducs de La Rochefoucauld and Bouillon, she incited a revolt in that city, and enlisted the aid of Spain."[1] [Footnote 1: Siècle de Louis XIV., chap. V.] The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, "the first French bishop to incite civil war upon any other than a religious pretext," are largely occupied with the diverse developments of this unique "war," so different from any other known to history, and in which, from beginning to end,--a period of five years,--he played so prominent a part. An extract or two from these memoirs will serve to show us that, as usual, Dumas' narrative adheres closely to the known facts of history. "The storm that was gathering" (after the arrest of the princes) "should have brought the cardinal to consider the state of affairs in Guyenne, of which the wretched administration of M. d'Épernon was the cause, and for which no other remedy could be found than to remove him from that government. A thousand private quarrels, half of which proceeded from the absurd chimera of his ignoble principality, had set him upon ill terms with the Parliament and the magistrates of Bordeaux, who were in most instances little wiser than he. Mazarin, who, in my opinion, was in this matter the maddest of them all, interested the royal authority in favor of M. d'Épernon, when a wise minister might have made both parties answerable for what had passed, without prejudice to the king, and rather to his advantage....