laimed I, "are barbarous edicts, made rather for
tigers than for men. Your punishments are atrocious, nor do I see their
application to correct a single malefactor; particularly in the case
of this young girl it is abominable, and if the king would listen to me
such savage edicts should not long remain unrepealed."

"That may do very well," replied M. de Maupeou, "some time hence, but
not just now; ere our penal code can be revised we must have magistrates
more supple than those who now dispute our slightest innovation; and if,
by the grace of God, we can manage to make a clear house of them, why we
may confidently anticipate the noblest results."

By these and similar insinuations the chancellor bespoke that aid and
assistance which I afterwards so largely rendered him when he commenced
the ruin of parliaments.

Upon another occasion my credit and influence were employed with equal
success. The objects of my present exertions were the comte and comtesse
de Louerne. Both husband and wife were deeply loaded with debts, a thing
common enough with the nobility of the time; these debts they never
paid, another thing by no means unusual; their creditors, whose flinty
hearts were but little moved by the considerations of their rank and
high blood, sent officers to enforce payment, when the Louernes opposed
them with positive force and violence, and the laws, thus outraged,
condemned them to suffer death. In vain did persons of the highest rank
in the kingdom intercede in their behalf, imploring of the chancellor
to interpose with the king; altho' deaf to every other entreaty he
instantly granted a reprieve at my solicitation, declaring I was the
only person who could have effected so much in behalf of the distressed
culprits, as well as being the only source thro' which the king's mercy
could be obtained.

Immediately upon this notification, I was waited upon by the comtesse de
Moyau, their daughter, and the baronne d'Heldorf, their daughter-in-law;
both these ladies came to me in the deepest sorrow, and I mingled
my sighs and tears with those they so plentifully shed; but this was
rendering poor service, and if I desired to aid their cause it was
requisite I should speak to the king, who was little disposed to show
any indulgence in such cases, and was never known to pass over any
attempts on the part of the nobility to resist the laws; he looked with
horror on every prospect of the return of those times which he hoped
a