remedy at all. The disease gained strength, grew worse and
worse, the patient awakened, Paris became sensible of her condition; she
groaned, but nobody minded it, so that she fell into a frenzy, whereupon
the patient became raving mad.

But now to come to particulars. Emeri, Superintendent of the Finances,
and in my opinion the most corrupt man of the age, multiplied edicts as
fast as he could find names to call them by. I cannot give you a better
idea of the man than by repeating what I heard him say in full
Council,--that faith was for tradesmen only, and that the Masters of
Requests who urged faith to be observed in the King's affairs deserved to
be punished. This man, who had in his youth been condemned to be hanged
at Lyons, absolutely governed Mazarin in all the domestic affairs of the
kingdom. I mention this, among many other instances which I could produce
of the same nature, to let you see that a nation does not feel the
extremity of misery till its governors have lost all shame, because that
is the instant when the subjects throw off all respect and awake
convulsively out of their lethargy.

The Swiss seemed, as it were, crushed under the weight of their chains,
when three of their powerful cantons revolted and formed themselves into
a league. The Dutch thought of nothing but an entire subjection to the
tyrant Duke of Alva, when the Prince of Orange, by the peculiar destiny
of great geniuses, who see further into the future than all the world
besides, conceived a plan and restored their liberty. The reason of all
this is plain: that which causes a supineness in suffering States is the
duration of the evil, which inclines the sufferers to believe it will
never have an end; as soon as they have hopes of getting out of it, which
never fails when the evil has arrived at a certain pitch, they are so
surprised, so glad, and so transported, that they run all of a sudden
into the other extreme, and are so far from thinking revolutions
impossible that they suppose them easy, and such a disposition alone is
sometimes able to bring them about; witness the late revolution in
France. Who could have imagined, three months before the critical period
of our disorders, that such a revolution could have happened in a kingdom
where all the branches of the royal family were strictly united, where
the Court was a slave to the Prime Minister, where the capital city and
all the provinces were in subjection to him, where the ar