ting about the petition to the Queen
for the liberation of the Priuces and the banishment of Cardinal Mazarin;
nevertheless, many of the members voted for it, upon a motion made by the
President Viole, who was a warm partisan of the Prince de Conde, not
because he had hopes of carrying it, but on purpose to embarrass M. de
Beaufort and myself upon a subject of which we did not care to speak, and
yet did not dare to be altogether silent about, without passing in some
measure for Mazarinists. President Viole did the Prince a great deal of
service on this occasion, for Bourdet a brave soldier, who had been
captain of the Guards and was attached to the interest of the
Prince--performed an action which emboldened the party very much, though
it had no success. He dressed himself and fourscore other officers of
his troops in mason's clothes, and having assembled many of the dregs of
the people, to whom he had distributed money, came directly to the Duc
d'Orleans as he was going out, and cried, "No Mazarin! God bless the
Princes!" His Royal Highness, at this apparition and the firing of a
brace of pistols at the same time by Bourdet, ran to the Great Chamber;
but M. de Beaufort stood his ground so well with the Duke's guards and
our men, that Bourdet was repulsed and thrown down the Parliament stairs.

But the confusion in the Great Chamber was still worse. There were daily
assemblies, wherein the Cardinal was severely attacked, and the Prince's
party had the pleasure of exposing us as his accomplices. What is very
strange is that at the same time the Cardinal and his friends accused us
of corresponding with the Parliament of Bordeaux, because we maintained,
in case the Court did not adjust affairs there, we would infallibly bring
the Parliament of Paris into the interest of the Prince. If I were at
the point of death I should have no need to be confessed on account of my
behaviour on this occasion. I acted with as much sincerity in this
juncture as if I had been the Cardinal's nephew, though really it was not
out of any love to him, but because I thought myself obliged in prudence
to oppose the progress of the Prince's faction, owing to the foolish
conduct of his enemies; and to this end I was obliged to oppose the
flattery of the Cardinal's tools as much as the efforts made by those who
were in the service of the Prince.

On the 3d of September President Bailleul returned with the other
deputies, and made a report in Parliame