She curtsied, and
would have kissed my hand, as being only bourgeois, while I was
noble; but I told her I would have no such folly, and I made her give
me a good motherly embrace!'
'I hope she gave you something to eat,' I said, laughing.
'Oh, yes; we had an excellent meal. She made us eat before sending
us home, soup, and ragout, and chocolate--excellent chocolate. She
had it brought as soon as possible, because Eustace looked so pale
and tired. Oh, Meg! She is the very best creature I have seen in
France. Your Rambouillets are nothing to her! I hope I may see her
often again!'
And while Eustace marveled if this were a passing tumult or the
beginning of a civil war, my most immediate wonder was what my mother
would say to this adventure.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE BARRICADES
My mother did not come home till the evening, when the streets had
become tolerably quiet. She had a strange account to give, for she
had been at the palace all the time in attendance on Queen Henrietta,
who tried in vain to impress her sister-in-law with a sense that the
matter was serious. Queen Anne of Austria was too proud to believe
that a parliament and a mob could do any damage to the throne of
France, whatever they might effect in England.
There she sat in her grand cabinet, and with her were the Cardinal,
the Duke of Longueville, and many other gentlemen, especially
Messieurs de Nogent and de Beautru, who were the wits, if not the
buffoons of the Court, and who turned all the reports they heard into
ridicule.
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