de Turenne. These young men were in high
spirits. You will find no traces of their feelings in the memoirs of
the time, for of course nothing of the kind would be allowed to pass
the censors of the press. But there was a wonderful sense of liberty
of speech and tongue during that siege. The younger gens de la robe,
as they were called, who, like Clement Darpent, had read their Livy
and Plutarch, were full of ideas of public virtue, and had meetings
among themselves, where M. Darpent dwelt on what he had imbibed from
my brother of English notions of duty to God, the King and the State.
It may seem strange that a cavalier family like ourselves should have
infused notions which were declared to smack of revolution, but the
constitution we had loved and fought for was a very Utopia to these
young French advocates. They, with the sanguine dreams of youth,
hoped that the Fronde was the beginning of a better state of things,
when all offices should be obtained by merit, never bought and sold,
and many of them were inventions of the Court for the express purpose
of sale. The great Cardinal had actually created forty offices for
counselors merely in order to sell them and their reversions! The
holders of these were universally laughed at, and not treated as on a
level with the old hereditary office-bearers, who at least might
think themselves of some use.
We smile sadly now to think of the grand aspirations, noble visions,
and brave words of those young advocates, each of whom thought
himself a very Epaminondas, or Gracchus, though M.
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