ect, for which M. Raphael Denouville hopes and fears in his charming little work on the Palmyrene, was apparently rescued from the fate of good intentions by Omar Bey, a Hungarian officer, who had served the Porte since 1848. He moved from Hamah with a body of some sixteen hundred men- enough to cut his way through half the vermin in Araby the Unblest. Presently, after occupying Palmyra, building barracks and restoring the old Druze castle, he proceeded eastward to Sukhnah, whence he could communicate with the force expected to march westward from Baghdad. The welcome intelligence was hailed with joy,

Palmyra, so long excluded from the Oriental tour, lay open to the European traveller; half a step had been taken towards an Euphrates Valley Railway. At Damascus men congratulated themselves upon the new line of frontier, which was naturally expected to strengthen and to extend the limits of Syria, and the merchant rejoiced to learn that his caravan would be no longer liable to wholesale plunder.

cus.

A fair vision doomed soon to fade! After six months or so of occupation, Omar Bey, whose men were half starving, became tired of Palmyra, and was recalled to DamasThe garrison was reduced to two hundred men under a captain, whose only friend was the Raki-flask; and the last I saw of the garrison was his orderly riding into Hums with two huge empty demijohns dangling at his saddlebow. The Bedawin waxed brave, and in the spring of 1871 I was obliged to send travellers to Palmyra by a long circuit, via the north and the north-west.

A certain official business compelled me to visit Karyatayn, which is within the jurisdiction of Damascus, and my wife resolved to accompany me. In this little enterprise I was warmly seconded by the Vicomte Fernand de Perrochel, a French traveller and author, who had twice visited Damascus in the hope of reaching Tadmor, and by M. Ionine, my Russian colleague. The governor-general, the fieldmarshal commanding the army of Syria, and other high officials lent us their best aid. We engaged a pair of dragomans, six servants, a cook, and eight muleteers; fourteen mules and eight baggage-asses, to carry tents and canteen, baggage and provisions; and we rode our own horses, being wrongly persuaded not to take donkeys: on long marches they would have been a pleasant change. We were peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of head dragoman; a certain Antun Wardi, who had Italianized his name to Rosa.

We altogether rejected the assistance of Mohammed, Shaykh of the Mezrab tribe, who has systematically fleeced travellers for a score of years. He demanded two napoleons a head for his wretched Arabs, sending a score when only one was wanted. Like all other chiefs, he would not guarantee his protégés, either in purse or person, against enemies, but only against his own friends. He allowed them but two days at Palmyra. He made them march twenty instead of fifteen hours between Karyatayn and their destination. He concealed the fact that there are wells the whole way, in order to make them hire camels and buy water-skins; and besides harassing them with night marches, he organized sham-attacks, in order to make them duly appreciate his protection. I rejoice to say that Mohammed's occupation is now gone: his miserable tribe was three times plundered within eighteen months, and instead of fighting he fell back upon the desert. May thus end all who oppose their petty interests to the general good - all that would shut roads instead of opening them! With a view of keeping up his title to escort travellers, he sent with us a clansman upon a well-bred mare, and armed with the honorable spear; but M. de Perrochel hired the mare; the crestfallen man was put upon a baggage-mule, and the poor spear was carried by a lame donkey.

Armed to the teeth, we set out in a chorus of groans and with general prognostications of evil. Ours was the first party since M. Dubois d'Angers was dangerously wounded, stripped, and turned out to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, because he would not salary the inevitable Bedawi. It would, doubtless, have been the interest of many and the delight of more to see us return in the scantiest of costume;

consequently a false report presently flew abroad that we had been pursued and plundered by the Ishmaelites.

The first night of our journey was passed under caravans near the then ruined Khan Kusayr in the Merj, or Ager Damascenus, the fertile valley-plain east of the Syrian metropolis. The weather became unusually cold, as, on the next morning, we left the foggy lowland and turned to the north-east, in order to cross the ridge-line of hills which, offsetting from the Anti-Libanus, runs from the capital towards the desert, and afterwards sweeps round to Palmyra. The line of travel is a break in the ridge, the Darb el Thaniyyah (Road of the Col), which the Rev. Mr. Porter converts into Jebel el Tiniyeh (Mountain of Figs). Then gently descending, we fell into a northern depression, a section of that extensive valley in the Anti-Libanus which, under a variety of names, runs nearly straight north-east (more exactly, sixty degrees) to Palmyra. Nothing can be more simple than the geography of the country. The traveller cannot lose his way in the Palmyra Valley without crossing the high and rugged mountains which hem it in on both sides; and if he be attacked by a razzia he can easily take refuge, and laugh at the Arab assailant. During the time of our journey the miserable little robber clans, Shitai and Ghiyas, had completely closed the country five hours' riding to the east of Damascus; whilst the Subai and the Anirzah bandits were making the Merj a battle-field, and were threatening to burn down the peaceful villages. Even as we crossed the Darb el Thaniyyah we were saddened by the report that a razzia of Bedawin had the day before murdered a wretched peasant, within easy sight of the capital. This state of things was a national scandal to the Porte, which, of course, was never allowed to know the truth.

We resolved to advance slowly, to examine every object, and to follow the most indirect paths. Hence our march to Palmyra occupied eight days: we returned, however, in four, with horses that called loudly for a week's rest.

On the second day we dismissed our escort, one officer and two privates of irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and we slept at the house of Da'ás Agha, hereditary chief of Jayrud. A noted sabre, and able to bring one hundred and fifty lances into the field, he was systematically neglected by the authorities because supposed to be friendly with foreigners. Shortly after my departure he barbarously tortured two wretched Arabs, throwing them into a pit full of fire, and practising upon them with his revolver. Thereupon he was taken into prime favor, and received the command of Hasyah.

Da'ás Agha escorted us from Jayrud with ten of his kinsmen mounted upon their best mares. In the bleak upland valley we suffered severely from the weather, and the sleety south-wester which cut our faces on our return was a 66 caution." Travellers must be prepared for much more cold than they will experience at Damascus, and during the hot season they must travel by night.

At Karyatayn, which we reached on the fifth day, Omar Bey, who was waiting for rations, money, transport, in fact every thing, offered us the most friendly welcome; and I gave protection to Shaykh Faris in connection with the English post to Baghdad. The former detached with us eighty bayonets of regulars and twenty-five sabres of irregulars, commanded by two officers. This body presently put to flight every thing in the way of Bedawin. A war party of two thousand men would not have attacked us, and I really believe that a band of thirty Englishmen, armed with breech-loading carbines and revolvers, could sweep clean the desert of the Euphrates from end to end.

At Karyatayn we hired seventeen camels to carry water. This would have been a complete waste of money had we gone like other travellers by the Darb el Sultani, or highway. Some three hours' ride to the right or south of the road, amongst the hills bounding the Palmyra Valley, is a fine cistern, the Ayn el Wu'úl (Ibex Fountain), where water is never wanting. There is a still more direct road, viâ the remains of an aqueduct and a ruin in the desert called "Kasr el Hayr," and looking like a church.

We chose, however, the little-known Baghdad or eastern road, called the Darb el Basir, from a well and ruin of that name. The next day we rested at a large deserted khan, or caravanserai, and on the eighth we made our entrance into Palmyra, where we were hospitably received by another Shaykh Faris. Our muleteers, for the convenience of their cattle, pitched the tents close to, and east of, the so-called Grand Colonnade, a malarious and unwholesome site. They should have encamped amongst the trees at a threshing-floor near three palms. Those who follow me are strongly advised not to lodge in the native village, whose mud huts, like wasps' nests, are all huddled within the ancient Temple of the Sun, or they may suffer from fever or ophthalmia. At present the water of Tadmor is like Harrogate, the climate is unhealthy, and the people are ragged and sickly. May is here, as in most parts of the northern hemisphere, the best travelling season; and in any but 'a phenomenal year, like 1870, the traveller need not fear to encounter, as we did, ice and snow, siroccos, and furious south-westers.

If asked whether Palmyra be worth all this trouble, I should reply no, and yes. No, if you merely go there, stay two days, and return, especially after sighting nobler Ba'albak. Certainly not for the Grand Colonnade of weatherbeaten limestone, by a stretch of courtesy called marble, which, rain-washed and earthquake-shaken, looks like a system of gallows. Not for the Temple of the Sun, the fredaine of a Roman emperor, a second-rate affair, an architectural evidence of Rome's declining days. Yes, if you would study the site and the environs, which are interesting and only partially explored, make excavations, and collect coins and tessera, which may be bought for a song.

The site of Palmyra is very interesting. Like Pæstum, "she stands between the mountains and the sea;" like Damascus, she sits upon the eastern slopes of the AntiLibanus, facing the Chol, or wilderness; but, unhappily, she has a dry torrent-bed, the Wady el Sayl, instead of a rushing Barada. She is built upon the shore-edge, where the sandy sea breaks upon its nearest headlands. This sea is the mysterious wilderness of the Euphrates, whose ships are camels, whose yachts are high-bred mares, and whose cock-boats are mules and asses. She is on the very threshold of the mountains, which the wild cavalry cannot scour as they do the level plain. And her position is such that we have not heard the last of the Tadmor, or, as the Arabs call her, Tudmur. Nor will it be difficult to revive her. large tract can be placed under cultivation when there shall be protection for life and property. Old wells exist in the ruins; foresting the highlands to the north and west will cause rain; and the aqueducts which brought water from Hums and Hamah, distant three to four days, may easily be repaired.

A

At

A description of the modern ruin of the great old dépôt has employed many able pens. But very little has been said concerning the tomb-towers which have taken at Palmyra the place of the Egyptian pyramids. Here, as elsewhere in ancient Syria, sepulture was extramural, and every settlement was approached by one or more Via Appia, much resembling that of ancient Rome. Palmyra there are, or rather were, notably two; one (south-west) upon the high-road to Damascus; the other, north-west of the official or monumental city, formed, doubtless, the main approach from Hums and Hamah. The two are lined on both sides with these interesting monuments, whose squat, solid forms of gloomy and unsquared sandstone contrast remarkably with the bastard classical and Roman architecture, meretricious in all its details, and glittering from afar in white limestone. Inscriptions in the Palmyrene character prove that they date from 314 to 414 of the Seleucidan era; but they have evidently been restored, and this perhaps fixes the latest restoration.

It is probable that the heathen practice of mummification declined under the Roman rule, especially after A.D. 130, when the great half-way house again changed its name to Adrianopolis. Still, vestiges of the old custom are found in the Hauran and in the Druze mountain west of the

great Auranitis Valley, extending deep into the second century, when, it is believed, the Himyaritic Benu Ghassan (Gassanides) of Damascus had abandoned their heathen faith for Christianity. I found in the cells fragments of mummies; and these, it is suspected, are the first ever brought to England. Nearly all the skulls contained datestones, more or less, and a peach-stone and an apricotstone were found under similar circumstances. At Shukkah, the ancient Saccæa, we picked up in the mummy-towers almond-shells with the sharp ends cut off, and forming baby-cups.

There are three tomb-towers at Palmyra still standing, and perhaps likely to yield good results. The people call them Kasr el Zaynah (Pretty Palace), Kasr el Azbá (Palace of the Maiden), and Kasr el 'Arú (Palace of the Bride). They number four and five stories; but the staircases, which run up the thickness of the walls, are broken, and so are the monolithic slabs that form the tower-floors. Explorers, therefore, must take with them ropes and hooks, ladders which will reach to eighty feet, planks to act as bridges, and a stout crowbar; we had none of these requirements, nor could the wretched village produce them. I have but little doubt that the upper stories contain tesseræ, coins, and pottery, perhaps entire mummies. The value of the latter may be judged by the fact that Dr. C. Carter Blake, after carefully examining the four ancient skulls which I deposited with the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, pronounced them to be old Syrian or

Phoenician.

The shortness of our visit allowed me only a day and a half to try the fortune of excavation at Palmyra. It was easy to hire a considerable number of laborers at two and one half piasters a head per diem, say sixpence, when in other places the wages would be at least double.

Operations began (April 15) at the group of tombtowers marked "Cemetery " in the handbook, and bearing west-south-west from the great Temple of the Sun. I chose this group because it appeared the oldest of the series. The fellahs, or peasants, know it as Kusúr abu Sayl (Palaces of the Father of a Torrent); and they stare when told that these massive buildings are not royal residences, but tombs. Here the loculi in the several stages were easily cleared out by my forty-five coolies, who had nothing but diminutive picks and hoes, grain-bags and body-clothes which they converted into baskets for removing sand and rubbish. But these cells, and those of the adjacent ruins, had before been ransacked; and they supplied nothing beyond skulls, bones, and shreds of mummycloths, whose dyes are remarkably brilliant.

The hands were then applied to an adjoining mound: it offered a tempting resemblance to the undulations of ground which cover the complicated chambered catacombs already laid open, and into one of which, some years ago, a camel fell; the roof having given way. After reaching a stratum of snow-white gypsum, which appeared to be artificial, though all hands agreed that it was not, we gave up the task, as time pressed us hard. The third attempt laid open the foundation of a house, and showed us the well, or rain-cistern, shaped, as such reservoirs are still in the Holy Land, like a soda-water bottle. The fourth trial was more successful. During our absence, the workmen came upon two oval slabs of soft limestone, each with its kit-cat in high relief. One was a man with straight features, short, curly beard, and hair disposed, as appears to have been the fashion for both sexes, in three circular rolls. The other was a feminine bust with features of a type so exaggerated as to resemble the negro. A third and similar work of art was brought, but the head had been removed. It would be hard to explain to you the excitement caused by these wonderful discoveries. Report flew abroad that gold images of life-size had been dug up; and the least disposed to exaggeration declared that chests full of gold coins and ingots had fallen to our lot.

On the next morning we left Palmyra; and after a hard gallop, which lasted for the best part of four days, we found ourselves, not much the worse for wear, at home in Damascus.

A CHAPTER FROM THE LIFE OF AN ARCHCONSPIRATOR.

BY T. A. TROLLOPE.

PIERRE LENET was a born conspirator, if ever there was one. And he had the happiness to live in times which offered a field for the activity he delighted in, such as perhaps no other period and no other society ever equalled in that respect. He was born at Dijon, in the early years of the seventeenth century. The exact date of his birth is not ascertainable. But as he became procureur-général of the parliament of Dijon by the cession of his father in the year 1637, he could not have been born much after the beginning of the century. He died at Paris on the 3d of July, 1671. His family had belonged for generations to the noblesse de robe. His father and grandfather were both presidents of the parliament of Dijon. It might be imagined that the position of magistrate in a country town, together with the additional staidness which might be supposed to be derived from such family connections and associations, would have insured to a man, whatever his natural inclinations might be, a life of peaceful usefulness and humdrum monotony. But anybody so imagining would have left out of his consideration the strange state of France during that wonderful time of the Fronde, - a time when it was quite on the cards that footmen and ladies'-maids might come to exercise an important influence on public events and on the fortunes of princes; when the only persons of whom it could be said that it was not on the cards that they should exercise any such influence were the millions of manants, the cultivators of the soil, who constituted the mass of the population of France; a time when the natural mode of proceeding of one who sought to earwig an archbishop, was to bribe the right reverend father's favorite; when all dignitaries, potentates, powers, and persons in authority, seemed to be playing a huge game of puss-in-the-corner; when all society was dancing the hays, and every body and thing was in the place where they might least be expected to be found; when, perhaps more completely than at any other time that history tells us of, the idea of duty was extinct, and men and women acted, and almost openly and wholly avowed that they acted, on no other motive save the consideration of what they conceived to be their interest and the gratification of their passions; a time when everybody constantly strove to deceive every other person engaged in the huge confused game, and when deception was so much a matter of course that those who were deceived felt little or no resentment against those who had deceived them, when the deceit was discovered; a bad time, a thoroughly bad and despicable time, but an extremely interesting one; and, above all, a highly picturesque one.

It is also a specially difficult time to understand; as it might be supposed it would be, even from what has here been said of it. When everybody, high and low, conspicuous and obscure, was busying himself, and effectually busying himself, with plots, schemes, and intrigues of every sort; when the women were as active and quite as influential as the men (for this is a notable speciality of the Fronde period), it may be imagined that the skein becomes a complex and a ravelled one. The consequence is, that of all the times and social conditions described by history, this Fronde time is one of the least satisfactorily understood by those whose reading is confined to the pages of the great historians. It is impossible that their works, let them have striven as they might to clothe the dry bones of what used to be called history with flesh and blood, should, by the general view to which they are necessarily limited, give their readers, not only any accurate understanding of all the pulling of the wires which led to great and important events, but, what is far more worth having, any lively picture of the sort of way in which men and women were then living and talking and thinking and acting. Fortunately, no period was ever richer in writers of memoirs. So many had stories to tell. So many, when left

high and dry in their old age by the stream of active life, had no other occupation or consolation than the telling of them. But it is a case of an embarras de richesses. Few, indeed, are the readers in the present day who can dream of coping with the mass of narrative which the French mémoire writers of the seventeenth century have left us. Life is too full and too short. But there is the complete living picture of that strange time embedded in those thousands of pages. And if one could succeed in detaching a scene or two, and fitting them into such a manageable size and form as would furnish a magic-lantern slide, without loss of the color of the original figures and facts, such a peep might suffice to give a reader a more living and concrete notion of this portion of French history than he has ever gathered from his previous studies.

On the 18th of January, 1650, an event happened which fell like a thunderbolt in the midst of the French world, and filled with amazement, not only the Court and Paris, but the whole of France. This was the sudden and totally unexpected arrest of the "the Princes." The reader of the French history of that period will meet with frequent reference to that event, and to a great variety of other facts as happening to, or performed by," the Princes." The personages thus designated par excellence were Louis II. of Bourbon, Prince de Condé, and his younger brother, Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti. The former was the man known in French history as the Grand Condé. He was the great-grandson of Charles of Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, and was the head of that branch of the Bourbons. "The Princes," therefore, so called as being princes of the blood royal. Condé had done much to deserve the title of "Great." Voltaire says of him that he was "a born general." He delivered France from a great danger, when. with much inferior forces, and giving battle against the advice of his council, he beat the Spaniards in the memorable fight of Rocroi, destroying in that and subsequent victories the famous Spanish infantry; at that day considered the finest in the world. Louis XIII. died in 1642. Rocroi was fought on the 19th of May, 1643. So that Condé was, perhaps fortunately for himself and for France, absent from Paris when the first troubles of the Fronde broke out. It is probable that he would have ranged himself on the side opposed to Cardinal Mazarin and the Court had he then been at leisure to busy himself with the intestine discords of his country.

Of course there could be little sympathy between any of the Grands Seigneurs of France, the remains of the old feudal nobility which Richelieu had so successfully crushed, and Mazarin. Richelieu was hated and feared. Mazarin was hated and despised. Nevertheless, when Condé, having vanquished the foreign enemies of France, and obtained an advantageous peace, ventured to Paris, and when both parties to the struggle which was going on between Mazarin and the Court on the one hand, against the Parliament and the Frondeurs on the other, were eager to enlist the hero on their side, he took the side of the Court, probably from a real patriotic sense of duty; and contributed largely to that first pacification, which was, after all, but a hollow truce. Overt violence was stayed, but plotting went on only the more actively on all sides. Mazarin was hated equally by the Parliament and by the Grands Seigneurs. The Noblesse de l'Epée and the Noblesse de Robe were equally against him. And the fact that he was able, amid such difficulties, to maintain his power so long, is a very curious and suggestive testimony to the efficacy of the work which his great predecessor, Richelieu, had accomplished.

But if Condé deemed it his duty to lend the weight of his name and influence to the support of the Court against the malcontent Frondeurs and Parliament, it did not follow that he was to dissemble his disgust at the spectacle of France and the French chivalry ruled by the rod of an intriguing cardinal, or to brook the insolently ambitious projects of the upstart priest. Accordingly, he was not sparing of mordant criticism and biting ridicule of every part of Mazarin's administration. And he especially exerted himself and plotted to prevent

the marriage which the cardinal was extremely anxious to bring about between his niece and the Duc de Mercœur.

These are the causes to which French historians generally attribute the sudden arrest of "the Princes on the 18th of July, 1650. But there was another cause -one of those back-stair causes which history is very apt to miss, unless she seeks for them in the pages of comparatively obscure mémoire writers - which seems to have led immediately to the catastrophe. Among the gentlemen who "served" Condé, was one Jarze, who had conceived an absurd notion that the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, looked on him with eyes of affection, and absolutely sent her a declaration of love! The queen took the first opportunity of reading him a severe lecture before all the Court, ending by commanding him never to come into her sight again. Condé, most unreasonably, moved probably by a desire of picking a quarrel with Mazarin, chose to consider himself affronted by the disgrace put upon his follower; and, demanding an interview with the minister, insolently required that Jarzé should be received by the queen that very evening. Anne submitted; but it is easy to imagine what must have been her feelings while doing so. Nevertheless, so important, so startling a step as the arrest of the victor of Rocroi was not to be undertaken lightly; and it was thought necessary to procure the consent of Gaston, the late king's brother, who was lieutenant-général of the kingdom. To this end Anne wrote with her own hand a note to Gondi, that most extraordinary of archbishops, who is better known in history as the Cardinal de Retz. Gondi was at that time one of the most popular men in Paris, and a leader of the opposition in the Parliament. The summons of the queen, however, brought him to her at once; the terms of a coalition between the Fronde and the Court were quickly agreed upon, and Gondi undertook, and succeeded in, the task of obtaining Gaston's consent to the proposed step. That obtained, the queen did not hesitate an instant in signing the fatal order, which was the cause of a new series of troubles and civil war to the unhappy country. Princes" were arrested as they were leaving the Palais Royal, and were safely lodged in Vincennes before a soul in Paris knew any thing about it. From Vincennes the prisoners were removed to Marcoussy, and thence to Havre. They were three in number: Condé himself, his brother, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc de Longueville, who had married their sister, and who must always be understood to be included in the mention of "the Princes," so often met with in the records of those times. Condé was born in 1621, and was therefore twenty-nine years old at the time of his arrest.

"The

Immense was the sensation produced all over France when this extraordinary news became known. People could not believe their ears. Nobody knew what it meant, or what it portended. But especially the news fell like a thunderbolt in Burgundy, and Dijon, the capital of it. That was Conde's special country; there were the principal castles and strong places belonging to him; there was the greatest number of the closest friends and adherents of his family; there the chief seat of his influence.

Now, our friend, Pierre Lenet, and his fathers before him, had always been special friends and followers of the Condés; and Pierre himself had been particularly distinguished by the present prince, who, among other marks of favor, had been godfather to one of his children. And Lenet, whatever else he may have been, now in the time of his patron's adversity proved himself a faithful friend and most devoted partisan. Nor was he a man to be content with wringing his hands and lamenting, while keeping quiet to see how matters would go, like most of the rest of his fellow-townsmen. He instantly conceived projects of the widest and most audacious scope for the recovery of his patron's liberty. He aimed at nothing less than raising such a flame throughout the country as should produce a civil war, the first result of which should be the destruction of Mazarin.

Lenet had been on the point of starting from Dijon for Paris. The last thing before leaving the town, he went to

the castle to take leave of the two commanders, to whose joint care Condé had committed it, and to enable himself to give his patron an account of the state of his fortress. This was on the 21st of January, 1650. He found the two officers Bussière and Comean their names were-in a strange state of agitation. For awhile they would not tell Lenet what it was that was moving them. But at last they let out the fact that a courtier had that morning reached the castle with tidings of the arrest of the princes!

-

Lenet's first thought was to encourage these men to be firm in doing their duty to the prince; he inquired into the condition of the castle and its means of defence, and treated it as a matter of course that they would hold it against all comers to the last extremity. Then, abandoning the idea of his journey, he set himself to consider what best could be done in Dijon. Thinking over the matter, as he walked home, he tells us that it appeared to him beyond all doubt that a 66 general revolution in favor of the prince and against the cardinal would declare itself; and that twentyfour hours would not pass without bringing tidings of a rising. Still less could I doubt," he goes on to say, “that we should be able to excite in Burgundy, by means of the strongholds, the friends, and the troops the prince possessed there, similar movements to those which I foresaw in Paris; which would give the example to the neighboring provinces, and especially to Champagne, which was under the government of the Prince de Conti. I thought, too, that Normandy, where the government and most part of the strong places were in the hands of the Duc de Longueville, or of his relations; where he had many friends, and where there was much discontent, would at once declare itself, as well as Guinne or Provence, where the disaffection of last year was by no means altogether healed."

He goes on to assign sundry other reasons for feeling sure that this, that, and the other part of the country would assuredly rise. Nevertheless, there was some reason to fear that a formidable rising might have the result of causing Mazarin to put the princes to death in their prison. But, on mature reflection, he came to the conclusion that the cardinal was not the man to dare any so violent a measure, "particularly if the young Duc d'Enghien (Condé's son), the Princess Dowager (his mother), the Princesse de Condé (she was a niece of Richelieu), and the Duchess of Longueville remained at liberty, as was confidently reported to be the case, and if they could withdraw themselves out of the reach of the Court."

"I at once therefore despatched a courier with three letters for the three princesses." It is curious to observe the capable man thus taking command of the family interests in the time of storm. Lenet had never held any particular office in the household of the prince, or had ever been in a position, either in the world generally, or in his relations with the prince's family, to make it natural that he should thus put himself forward to say what should be done in the critical circumstances in which the family was placed; but he felt himself to be the man that was needed, and seized the opportunity of launching himself on a sea of plots and intrigues and adventures, which made up exactly the sort of life for which he was fitted, and calculated to shine in. Not that Lenet was altogether so much a stranger to the grand monde as another procureur-général of a provincial parliament would in all probability have been. The special favor of Condé had often kept him near his person; and the credit and influence he was supposed to enjoy with the prince caused his acquaintance to be sought by all the crowd of young nobles of both sexes, who, for one reason or another, wished to pay court to the young hero of Rocroi. Thus we find him to have been an intimate friend and companion of Bussy Rabutin, Madame Sevigne's well-known cousin; and there is a letter in verse extant, which Lenet and Bussy wrote conjointly to Madame Sevigné and her husband when they were rusticizing in Brittany. This epistle made rather a succès de société in its day; and as French critics have praised it, and it is a good specimen of the sort of literary play which was then so much in fashion in French society, the reader is here presented with an English version of it: