usiness. On the morrow, the Regent, who was
wearied with Versailles,--for he liked to live in Paris, where all his
pleasures were within easy reach,--and who met with opposition from the
Court doctors, all comfortably lodged at Versailles, to the removal of
the person of the King to Vincennes, under pretext of a slight cold,
fetched other doctors from Paris, who had been sent for to see the
deceased King. These practitioners, who had nothing to gain by
recommending Versailles, laughed at the Court doctors, and upon their
opinion it was resolved to take the King to Vincennes, where all was
ready for him on the morrow.

He set out, then, that day from Versailles, at about two o'clock in the
day, in company with the Regent, the Duchesse de Ventadour, the Duc du
Maine, and the Marechal de Villeroy, passed round the ramparts of Paris,
without entering the city, and arrived at Vincennes about five o'clock,
many people and carriages having come out along the road to see him.

On the day after the arrival of the King at Vincennes, the Regent worked
all the morning with all the Secretaries of State separately, whom he had
charged to bring him the list of all the 'lettres de cachet' issued from
their bureaux, and a statement of the reasons for which they were
delivered, as such oftentimes were slight. The majority of the 'lettres
de cachet' of exile and of imprisonment had been drawn up against
Jansenists, and people who had opposed the constitution; numbers the
reasons of which were known only to the deceased King, and to those who
had induced him to grant them; others were of the time of previous
ministers, and among them were many which had been long forgotten and
unknown. The Regent restored everybody to liberty, exiles and prisoners,
except those whom he knew to have been arrested for grave crimes, or
affairs of State; and brought down infinite benedictions upon himself by
this act of justice and humanity.

Many very singular and strange stories were then circulated, which showed
the tyranny of the last reign, and of its ministers, and caused the
misfortunes of the prisoners to be deplored. Among those in the Bastille
was a man who had been imprisoned thirty-five years. Arrested the day he
arrived in Paris, on a journey from Italy, to which country he belonged.
It has never been known why he was arrested, and he had never been
examined, as was the case with the majority of the others: people were
persuaded a mistake