announced by the discourse of the
Keeper of the Seals, the force of which penetrated all the Parliament.
General consternation spread itself over their faces. Scarcely one of
the members dared to speak to his neighbour. I remarked that the Abbe
Pucelle, who, although only counsellor-clerk, was upon the forms in front
of me, stood, so that he might hear better every time the Keeper of the
Seals spoke. Bitter grief, obviously full of vexation, obscured the
visage of the Chief-President. Shame and confusion were painted there.

After the vote, and when the Keeper of the Seals had pronounced, I saw
the principal members of the Parliament in commotion. The Chief-
President was about to speak. He did so by uttering the remonstrance of
the Parliament, full of the most subtle and impudent malice against the
Regent, and of insolence against the King. The villain trembled,
nevertheless, in pronouncing it. His voice broken, his eyes constrained,
his flurry and confusion, contradicted the venomous words he uttered;
libations he could not abstain from offering to himself and his company.
This was the moment when I relished, with delight utterly impossible to
express, the sight of these haughty lawyers (who had dared to refuse us
the salutation), prostrated upon their knees, and rendering, at our feet,
homage to the throne, whilst we sat covered upon elevated seats, at the
side of that same throne. These situations and these postures, so widely
disproportioned, plead of themselves with all the force of evidence, the
cause of those who are really and truly 'laterales regis' against this
'vas electum' of the third estate. My eyes fixed, glued, upon these
haughty bourgeois, with their uncovered heads humiliated to the level of
our feet, traversed the chief members kneeling or standing, and the ample
folds of those fur robes of rabbit-skin that would imitate ermine, which
waved at each long and redoubled genuflexion; genuflexions which only
finished by command of the King.

The remonstrance being finished, the Keeper of the Seals mentioned to the
King their wishes, asking further opinions; took his place again; cast
his eyes on the Chief-President, and said: The King wishes to be obeyed,
and obeyed immediately.

This grand speech was a thunder-bolt which overturned councillors and
presidents in the most marked manner. All of them lowered their heads,
and the majority kept them lowered for a long time. The rest of the
specta