'Unhappy man,' he cried, 'if your
father saw you!' This seemed to touch the man; he cried: 'Vive le
Coadjuteur!' And so easily were the people swayed, that they all
began to applaud him to the skies, and he led them off to the market-
place.
'We thought ourselves rid of them,' said my mother, 'we began to
breathe again, and I was coming home, but, bah! No such thing! They
are all coming back, thirty or forty thousand of them, only without
their weapons. At least the gentlemen said so, but I am sure they
had them hidden. Up comes M. Le Coadjuteur again, the Marshal de
Meileraye leading him by the hand up the Queen, and saying: 'Here,
Madame, is one to whom I owe my life, but to whom your Majesty owes
the safety of the State, nay, perhaps of the palace.''
The Queen smiled, seeing through it all, said my mother, and the
Coadjutor broke in: 'The matter is not myself, Madame, it is Paris,
now disarmed and submissive, at your Majesty's feet.'
'It is very guilty, and far from submissive,' said the Queen angrily;
'pray, if it were so furious, how can it have been so rapidly tamed?'
And then M. de Meilleraye must needs break in furiously: 'Madame, an
honest man cannot dissemble the state of things. If Broussel is not
set at liberty, tomorrow there will not be one stone upon another at
Paris.'
But the Queen was firm, and put them both down, only saying: 'Go and
rest, Monsieur, you have worked hard.
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