nd had conspired to seize his person.

The Parliament, considering this letter and that the President le Feron,
'prevot des marchands', was a creature of the Court, ordered the citizens
to arms, the gates to be secured, and the 'prevot des marchands' and the
'lieutenant de police' to keep open the necessary passages for
provisions.

Having thought it good policy that the first public step of resistance
should be taken by the Parliament to justify the disobedience of private
persons, I then invented this stratagem to render me the more excusable
to the Queen for not going to Saint Germain. Having taken leave of all
friends and rejected all their entreaties for my stay in Paris, I took
coach as if I were driving to Court, but, by good luck, met with an
eminent timber-merchant, a very good friend of mine, at the end of
Notre-Dame Street, who was very much out of humour, set upon my
postilion, and threatened my coachman. The people came and overturned my
coach, and the women, shrieking, carried me back to my own house.

I wrote to the Queen and Prince, signifying how sorry I was that I had
met with such a stoppage; but the Queen treated the messenger with scorn
and contempt. The Prince, at the same time that he pitied me, could not
help showing his anger. La Riviere attacked me with railleries and
invectives, and the messenger thought they were sure of putting the rope
about all our necks on the morrow.

I was not so much alarmed at their menaces as at the news I heard the
same day that M. de Longueville, returning from Rouen, had turned off to
Saint Germain. Marechal de La Mothe told me twenty times that he would
do everything to the letter that M. de Longueville would have him do for
or against the Court. M. de Bouillon quarrelled with me for confiding in
men who acted so contrary to the repeated assurances I had given him of
their good behaviour. And besides all this, Madame de Longueville
protested to me that she had received no news from M. de La
Rochefoucault, who went soon after the King, with a design to fortify the
Prince de Conti in his resolution and to bring him back to Paris. Upon
this I sent the Marquis de Noirmoutier to Saint Germain to learn what we
had to trust to.

On the 7th of January, 1649, an order was sent from the King to the
Parliament to remove to Montargis, to the Chamber of Accounts to adjourn
to Orleans and to the Grand Council to retire to Mantes. A packet was
also sent to the Par