Mademoiselle wrote of that time: "There never were as many balls as there were that year; and I went to them all."
The final crisis came the thirteenth day of May. Immediately after the King gave up the ghost, the Queen and all the Court retired from the death-chamber and made ready to depart from Saint Germain early in the morning. The moving was like breaking camp. At daybreak long files of baggage wagons laden with furniture and with luggage began to descend the hill of Saint Germain, and soon afterward crowded chariots, drawn by six horses, and groups of cavaliers, joined the lumbering wains. The suppressed droning of many voices accompanied the procession. At eleven o'clock silence fell upon the long, writhing line, and an army corps surrounding the royal mourners passed, escorted by the Marshals of France, dukes and peers, and the gentlemen of the Court,--all mounted.
The last of the battalions filed by the van of the procession, and the chariots and the wains moved on, mingling with the servitors and men of all trades, who in that day followed in the train of all the great.
Saint Germain was vacant. The last errand boy vanished, the murmur of the moving throng died in the distance; the shroud of silence wrapped the new château, and the curtain fell upon the fifth act of the reign of Louis XIII. There remained upon the stage only a corpse, light as a plume, watched by a lieutenant and his guard.
[Footnote 60: Mademoiselle was ten years old at that time.]
[Footnote 61: The Palais-Royal of to-day.]
[Footnote 62: _Alex. Hardy et le théâtre français_, Eugène Rigal.]
[Footnote 63: Sorel, _La maison des jeux_. The book was published in 1642, but M. E. Rigal supposes that the disorders and the complaints cited in it date from a previous epoch.]
[Footnote 65: Certainly the desire was not lacking.--AUTHOR.]
[Footnote 66: _Le théâtre au temps du Corneille_, Gustave Reynier. The first representation of the _Cid_ took place either in December, 1636, or in January, 1637.]
[Footnote 67: See dedicatory letter accompanying a comedy played in 1632 and published in 1636. _Galanteries du duc d'Ossonne._ Mairet.]
[Footnote 68: _Aminta_ was played in 1573, but it was not imprinted until 1581, when it was first known outside of Italy.]