at a bed of justice, the registration of all the papal bulls succeeding the Unigenitus.  In vain had D’Aguesseau, reappointed to the chancellorship, exhorted the Parliament to yield:  he had fallen in public esteem.  Abbe Pernelle, ecclesiastical councillor, as distinguished for his talent as for his courage, proposed a solemn declaration, analogous, at bottom, to the maxims of the Gallican church, which had been drawn up by Bossuet, in the assembly of the clergy of France.  The decision of the Parliament was quashed by the council.  An order from the king, forbidding discussion, was brought to the court by Count Maurepas; its contents were divined, and Parliament refused to open it.  The king iterated his injunctions.  “If his Majesty were at the Louvre,” cried Abbe Pernelle, “it would be the court’s duty to go and let him know how his orders are executed.”  “Marly is not so very far!” shouted a young appeal-court councillor (aux enquetes) eagerly.  “To Marly!  To Marly!” at once repeated the whole chamber.  The old councillors themselves murmured between their teeth, “To Marly!” Fourteen carriages conveyed to Marly fifty magistrates, headed by the presidents.  The king refused to receive them; in vain the premier president insisted upon it, to Cardinal Fleury; the monarch and his Parliament remained equally obstinate.  “What a sad position!” exclaimed Abbe Pernelle, “not to be able to fulfil one’s duties without falling into the crime of disobedience!  We speak, and we are forbidden a word; we deliberate, and we are threatened.  What remains for us, then, in this deplorable position, but to represent to the king the impossibility of existing under form of Parliament, without having permission to speak; the impossibility, by consequence, of continuing our functions?” Abbe Pernelle was carried off in the night, and confined in the abbey of Corbigny, in Nivernais, of which he was titular head.  Other councillors were arrested; a hundred and fifty magistrates immediately gave in their resignation.  Rising in the middle of the assembly, they went out two and two, dressed in their long scarlet robes, and threaded the crowd in silence.  There was a shout as they went, “There go true Romans, and fathers of their country!” “All those who saw this procession,” says the advocate Barbier, “declare that it was something august and overpowering.”  The government did not accept the resignations; the struggle continued.  A hundred and thirty-nine members received letters under the king’s seal (lettres de cachet), exiling them to the four quarters of France.  The Grand Chamber had been spared; the old councillors, alone remaining, enregistered purely and simply the declarations of the keeper of the seals.  Once more the Parliament was subdued; it had testified its complete political impotence.  The iron hand of Richelieu, the perfect address of Mazarin, were no longer necessary to silence it; the prudent moderation, the reserved frigidity, of Cardinal Fleury had sufficed