Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/38

16. " Men of property, without considering that an evil is some- times necessary, and that, in this respect, all the ages have been about equal, hoped through disorder to attain to some better order; and that word reformation not only pleased them as a good principle, but it also suited those who courted evil through the excess of their folly and ambition."

There are moments when all things concur for disorder and ruin, and when sedition is in the very air. " The star," says Madame de Motteville, "was at that time terrible against kings."

The first scenes of the Fronde are related by her in a manner that does not pale before even the narrative of Car- dinal de Retz. The latter gives us the scene in the rue du Palais-Eoyal when he enters it, and of the ulterior of the archbishop's palace. Madame de Motteville shows us the interior of the queen's cabinet, where she finds herself, at first, the only person who is seriously alarmed. The first day of the Barricades was almost wholly spent in joking her. " As I was the least valiant of the company, all the shame of that day fell upon me."

For a person belonging to that interior she comprehends very clearly and at once the nature of the revolt in the town, and the disorder so quickly and so well organized. "The bourgeois," she says, " who had taken arms very willingly to save the city from pillage, were no better than the populace, and demanded Broussel as heartily as the scavengers; for, besides being infected with a love of the public welfare, which they reckoned to be theirs personally, . . . they were filled with joy in thinking themselves necessary to some- thing." These words, " infected with a love of the public welfare," have often been quoted ; but we should see in them only a simple little jest of Madame de Motteville ; she knew what she was saying in speaking thus and in characterizing