ting a glance towards the
door, as the members of the council were beginning to take their places:
"they will be prudent; the Count of Toulouse promised me so." "But, if
they were to do anything foolish, or were to leave Paris?" "They shall
be arrested, I give you my word," replied the Duke of Orleans, in a
firmer tone than usual. They had just read the decree reducing the
legitimatized to their degree in the peerage, and M. le Duc had claimed
the superintendence of the king's education, when it was announced that
the Parliament, in their scarlet robes, were arriving in the court of the
palace. Marshal de Villeroi alone dared to protest. "Here, then," said
he with a sigh, "are all the late king's dispositions upset; I cannot see
it without sorrow. M. du Maine is very unfortunate." "Sir," rejoined
the Regent, with animation, "M. du Maine is my brother-in-law, but I
prefer an open to a hidden enemy."

With the same air the Duke of Orleans passed to the bed of justice, "with
a gentle but resolute majesty, which was quite new to him; eyes
observant, but bearing grave and easy; M. le Duc staid, circumspect,
surrounded by a sort of radiance that adorned his whole person, and under
perceptible restraint; the keeper of the seals, in his chair, motionless,
gazing askance with that witful fire which flashed from his eyes and
which seemed to pierce all bosoms, in presence of that Parliament which
had so often given him orders standing at its bar as chief of police, in
presence of that premier president, so superior to him, so haughty, so
proud of his Duke of Maine, so mightily in hopes of the seals." After
his speech, and the reading of the king's decree, the premier president
was for attempting a remonstrance; D'Argenson mounted the step,
approached the young king, and then, without taking any opinion, said, in
a very loud voice, "The king desires to be obeyed, and obeyed at once."
There was nothing further for it but to enregister the edict; all the
decrees of the Parliament were quashed.

Some old servants of Louis XIV., friends and confidants of the Duke of
Maine, alone appeared moved. The young king was laughing, and the crowd
of spectators were amusing themselves with the scene, without any
sensible interest in the court intrigues. The Duchess of Maine made her
husband pay for his humble behavior at the council; "she was," says St.
Simon, "at one time motionless with grief, at another boiling with rage,
and her po