And, indeed, it is strange to have lived through two revolutions,
one so awful in its final catastrophe that it dwarfs the other, yet both
terrible; for I, who was a witness of the sufferings of Princes and
Princesses during the two wars of the Fronde, am not inclined to think
lightly of a civil war which cost France some of the flower of her
nobility, and made her greatest hero a prisoner and an exile for seven
years of his life.
"But oh, my dear, it was a romantic time! and I look back and am proud to
have lived in it. I was but twelve years old at the siege of Paris; but
I was in Madame de Longueville's room, at the Hotel de Ville, while the
fighting was going on, and the officers, in their steel cuirasses, coming
in from the thick of the strife. Such a confusion of fine ladies and armed
men--breast-plates and blue scarves--fiddles squeaking in the salon,
trumpets sounding in the square below!"
* * * * *
In a letter of later date Lady Fareham expatiated upon the folly of her
sister's spiritual guides.
"I am desolated, _ma mie_, by the absurd restriction which forbids you to
profit by my New Year's gift. I thought, when I sent you all the volumes of
la Scudery's enchanting romance, I had laid up for you a year of enjoyment,
and that, touched by the baguette of that exquisite fancy, your convent
walls would fall, like those of Jericho at the sound of Jewish trumpets,
and you would be transported in imagination to the finest society in the
world--the company of Cyrus and Mandane--under which Oriental disguise you
are shown every feature of mind and person in Conde and his heroic sister,
my esteemed friend, the Duchesse de Longueville.
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