themselves had let the right fellow go, and pretended to be all upon one of their own gang.  At last they bring the man to the gentleman to ask him what the fellow had done, who, when he saw the person they seized on, presently told them that was not the man.  Then they seemed to be in more consternation than before, and spread themselves all over the street, crying, “Larron, larron!” pretending to search for the fellow; and so one one way, one another, they were all gone, the noise went over, the gentlemen stood looking one at another, and the bawling doctor began to have the crowd about him again.  This was the first French trick I had the opportunity of seeing, but I was told they have a great many more as dexterous as this.

We soon got acquaintance with these gentlemen, who were going to Paris, as well as we; so the next day we made up our company with them, and were a pretty troop of five gentlemen and four servants.

As we had really no design to stay long at Paris, so indeed, excepting the city itself, there was not much to be seen there.  Cardinal Richelieu, who was not only a supreme minister in the Church, but Prime Minister in the State, was now made also General of the King’s Forces, with a title never known in France before nor since, viz., Lieutenant-General “au place du Roi,” in the king’s stead, or, as some have since translated it, representing the person of the king.

Under this character he pretended to execute all the royal powers in the army without appeal to the king, or without waiting for orders; and having parted from Paris the winter before had now actually begun the war against the Duke of Savoy, in the process of which he restored the Duke of Mantua, and having taken Pignerol from the duke, put it into such a state of defence as the duke could never force it out of his hands, and reduced the duke, rather by manage and conduct than by force, to make peace without it; so as annexing it to the crown of France it has ever since been a thorn in his foot that has always made the peace of Savoy lame and precarious, and France has since made Pignerol one of the strongest fortresses in the world.

As the cardinal, with all the military part of the court, was in the field, so the king, to be near him, was gone with the queen and all the court, just before I reached Paris, to reside at Lyons.  All these considered, there was nothing to do at Paris; the court looked like a citizen’s house when the family was all gone into the country, and I thought the whole city looked very melancholy, compared to all the fine things I had heard of it.

The queen-mother and her party were chagrined at the cardinal, who, though he owed his grandeur to her immediate favour, was now grown too great any longer to be at the command of her Majesty, or indeed in her interest; and therefore the queen was under dissatisfaction and her party looked very much down.