Which duty done, D'Orleans returns in from the gate; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding Parlement, an applauding France; and so--has cut his Court-moorings, shall we say?
And will now sail and drift, fast enough, towards Chaos?
Thou foolish D'Orleans; Equality that art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and peck?
Not yet wholly.
Next day, a Lettre-de-Cachet sends D'Orleans to bethink himself in his Chateau of Villers-Cotterets, where, alas, is no Paris with its joyous necessaries of life; no fascinating indispensable Madame de Buffon,--light wife of a great Naturalist much too old for her.
Monseigneur, it is said, does nothing but walk distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets; cursing his stars.

Versailles itself shall hear penitent wail from him, so hard is his doom.

By a second, simultaneous Lettre-de-Cachet, Goody Freteau is hurled into the Stronghold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes; by a third, Sabatier de Cabre into Mont St.
Michel, amid the Norman quicksands.

As for the Parlement, it must, on summons, travel out to Versailles, with its Register-Book under its arm, to have the Protest biffe (expunged); not without admonition, and even rebuke.

A stroke of authority which, one might have hoped, would quiet matters.
Unhappily, no; it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing coursers, which makes them rear worse! When a team of Twenty-five Millions begins rearing, what is Lomenie's whip?
The Parlement will nowise acquiesce meekly; and set to register the Protestant Edict, and do its other work, in salutary fear of these three Lettres-de-Cachet.