"Once she spoke of you to me--pityingly, as one might speak of a dead man
whose life had not been good."
"Yes, yes," I broke in. "It matters little. Your story, M. Malpertuis."
"After I had been at the ch?teau ten days, we learnt that Eug?ne de
Canaples had been sent to the Bastille. The news came in a letter penned
by his Eminence himself--a bitter, viperish letter, with a covert threat in
every line. The Chevalier's anger went white hot as he read the
disappointed Cardinal's epistle. His Eminence accused Eug?ne of being a
frondeur; M. de Canaples, whose politics had grown sadly rusted in the
country, asked me the meaning of the word. I explained to him the petty
squabbles between Court and Parliament, in consequence of the extortionate
imposts and of Mazarin's avariciousness. I avowed myself a partisan of the
Fronde, and within three days the Chevalier--who but a little time before
had sought an alliance with the Cardinal's family--had become as rabid a
frondeur as M. de Gondi, as fierce an anticardinalist as M. de Beaufort.
"I humoured him in his new madness, with the result that ere long from
being a frondeur in heart, he thirsted to become a frondeur in deeds, and
he ended by begging me to bear a letter from him to the Coadjutor of Paris,
wherein he offered to place at M.
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