often, till I was well enough to walk about, which was not in less than ten days, and then we thought fit to be gone, so we took post for Orleans.  But when I came upon the road I found myself in a new error, for my wound opened again with riding, and I was in a worse condition than before, being forced to take up at a little village on the road, called ——­, about ——­ miles from Orleans, where there was no surgeon to be had, but a sorry country barber, who nevertheless dressed me as well as he could, and in about a week more I was able to walk to Orleans at three times.  Here I stayed till I was quite well, and took coach for Lyons and so through Savoy into Italy.

I spent nearly two years’ time after this bad beginning in travelling through Italy, and to the several courts of Rome, Naples, Venice, and Vienna.

When I came to Lyons the king was gone from thence to Grenoble to meet the cardinal, but the queens were both at Lyons.

The French affairs seemed at this time to have but an indifferent aspect.  There was no life in anything but where the cardinal was:  he pushed on everything with extraordinary conduct, and generally with success; he had taken Susa and Pignerol from the Duke of Savoy, and was preparing to push the duke even out of all his dominions.

But in the meantime everywhere else things looked ill; the troops were ill-paid, the magazines empty, the people mutinous, and a general disorder seized the minds of the court; and the cardinal, who was the soul of everything, desired this interview at Grenoble, in order to put things into some better method.

This politic minister always ordered matters so, that if there was success in anything the glory was his, but if things miscarried it was all laid upon the king.  This conduct was so much the more nice, as it is the direct contrary to the custom in like cases, where kings assume the glory of all the success in an action, and when a thing miscarries make themselves easy by sacrificing their ministers and favourites to the complaints and resentments of the people; but this accurate refined statesman got over this point.

While we were at Lyons, and as I remember, the third day after our coming thither, we had like to have been involved in a state broil, without knowing where we were.  It was of a Sunday in the evening, the people of Lyons, who had been sorely oppressed in taxes, and the war in Italy pinching their trade, began to be very tumultuous.  We found the day before the mob got together in great crowds, and talked oddly; the king was everywhere reviled, and spoken disrespectfully of, and the magistrates of the city either winked at, or durst not attempt to meddle, lest they should provoke the people.

But on Sunday night, about midnight, we were waked by a prodigious noise in the street.  I jumped out of bed, and running to the window, I saw the street as full of mob as it could hold, some armed with muskets and halberds, matched in very good order; others in disorderly crowds, all shouting and crying out, “Du paix le roi,” and the like.  One that led a great party of this rabble carried a loaf of bread upon the top of a pike, and other lesser loaves, signifying the smallness of their bread, occasioned by dearness.