Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV | Page 4

me
very much." At length, a hole was knocked in the gate; and a gentleman
of her train, who had directed the attack, beckoned her to come on. "As
it was very muddy, a man took me and carried me forward, and thrust
me in at this hole, where my head was no sooner through than the
drums beat to salute me. I gave my hand to the captain of the guard.
The shouts redoubled. Two men took me and put me in a wooden chair.
I do not know whether I was seated in it or on their arms, for I was
beside myself with joy. Everybody was kissing my hands, and I almost
died with laughing to see myself in such an odd position." There was
no resisting the enthusiasm of the people and the soldiers. Orleans was
won for the Fronde. [Footnote: _Memoires de Mademoiselle de
Montpensier_, I. 358-363 (ed. 1859).]
The young Countesses of Frontenac and Fiesque had constantly
followed her, and climbed after her through the hole in the gate. Her
father wrote to compliment them on their prowess, and addressed his
letter _à Mesdames les Comtesses, Maréchales de Camp dans l'armee
de ma fille contre le Mazarin_. Officers and soldiers took part in the
pleasantry; and, as Madame de Frontenac passed on horseback before
the troops, they saluted her with the honors paid to a brigadier.
When the king, or Cardinal Mazarin who controlled him, had
triumphed over the revolting princes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier
paid the penalty of her exploit by a temporary banishment from the
court. She roamed from place to place, with a little court of her own, of
which Madame de Frontenac was a conspicuous member. During the
war, Count Frontenac had been dangerously ill of a fever in Paris; and
his wife had been absent for a time, attending him. She soon rejoined
the princess, who was at her chateau of St. Fargeau, three days' journey
from Paris, when an incident occurred which placed the married life of
her fair companion in an unexpected light. "The Duchesse de Sully

came to see me, and brought with her M. d'Herbault and M. de
Frontenac. Frontenac had stopped here once before, but it was only for
a week, when he still had the fever, and took great care of himself like a
man who had been at the door of death. This time he was in high health.
His arrival had not been expected, and his wife was so much surprised
that everybody observed it, especially as the surprise seemed to be not
at all a pleasant one. Instead of going to talk with her husband, she
went off and hid herself, crying and screaming because he had said that
he would like to have her company that evening. I was very much
astonished, especially as I had never before perceived her aversion to
him. The elder Comtesse de Fiesque remonstrated with her; but she
only cried the more. Madame de Fiesque then brought books to show
her her duty as a wife; but it did no good, and at last she got into such a
state that we sent for the curé with holy water to exorcise her."
[Footnote: _Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, II. 265. The
curé's holy water, or his exhortations, were at last successful.]
Count Frontenac came of an ancient and noble race, said to have been
of Basque origin. His father held a high post in the household of Louis
XIII., who became the child's god-father, and gave him his own name.
At the age of fifteen, the young Louis showed an incontrollable passion
for the life of a soldier. He was sent to the seat of war in Holland, to
serve under the Prince of Orange. At the age of nineteen, he was a
volunteer at the siege of Hesdin; in the next year, he was at Arras,
where he distinguished himself during a sortie of the garrison; in the
next, he took part in the siege of Aire; and, in the next, in those of
Callioure and Perpignan. At the age of twenty-three, he was made
colonel of the regiment of Normandy, which he commanded in
repeated battles and sieges of the Italian campaign. He was several
times wounded, and in 1646 he had an arm broken at the siege of
Orbitello. In the same year, when twenty-six years old, he was raised to
the rank of marechal de camp., equivalent to that of brigadier-general.
A year or two later, we find him at Paris, at the house of his father, on
the Quai des Celestins. [Footnote: Pinard, _Chronologie
Historique-militaire_, VI; _Table de la Gazette de France_; Jul,
_Dictionnaire Critique, Biographique, et d'Histoire_, art. "Frontenac;"
Goyer, Oraison Funebre du Comte de Frontenac.]
In the same neighborhood