Shortly after the Duke of Shrewsbury arrived in Paris, the Hotel de Powis
in London, occupied by our ambassador the Duc d'Aumont, was burnt to the
ground. A neighbouring house was pulled down to prevent others catching
fire. The plate of M. d'Aumont was saved. He pretended to have lost
everything else. He pretended also to have received several warnings
that his house was to be burnt and himself assassinated, and that the
Queen, to whom he had mentioned these warnings, offered to give him a
guard. People judged otherwise in London and Paris, and felt persuaded
he himself had been the incendiary in order to draw money from the King
and also to conceal some monstrous smuggling operations, by which he
gained enormously, and which the English had complained of ever since his
arrival. This is at least what was publicly said in the two courts and
cities, and nearly everybody believed it.

But to return to the peace. The renunciations were ready, towards the
middle of March, and were agreed upon. The King was invited to sign them
by his own most pressing interest; and the Court of England, to which we
owed all, was not less interested in consummating this grand work, so as
to enjoy, with the glory of having imposed it upon all the powers, that
domestic repose which was unceasingly disturbed by the party opposed to
the government, which party, excited by the enemies of peace abroad,
could not cease to cause disquiet to the Queen's minister, while, by
delay in signing, vain hopes of disturbing the peace or hindering its
ratification existed in people's minds. The King of Spain had made his
renunciations with all the solidity and solemnity which could be desired
from the laws, customs, and usages of Spain. It only remained for France
to imitate him.

For the ceremony that was to take place, all that could be obtained in
order to render it more solemn was the presence of the peers. But the
King was so jealous of his authority, and so little inclined to pay
attention to that of others, that he wished to content himself with
merely saying in a general way that he hoped to find all the peers at the
Parliament when the renunciations were made. I told M. d'Orleans that if
the King thought such an announcement as this was enough he might rely
upon finding not a single peer at the Parliament. I added, that if the
King did not himself invite each peer, the master of the ceremonies ought
to do so for him, according to the cust