The President Coigneux whispered to me, saying, “I have no hopes but in you; we shall be undone if you do not work underground.”  I sat up accordingly all night to prepare instructions for Saint-Ibal to treat with the Count Fuensaldagne, and oblige him to march with the Spanish army, in case of need, to our assistance, and was just going to send him away to Brussels when M. de Chatillon, my friend and kinsman, who mortally hated the Cardinal, came to tell me that the Prince de Conde would be the next day at Ruel; that the Prince was enraged against the Cardinal, and was sure he would ruin the State if he were let alone, and that the Cardinal held a correspondence in cipher with a fellow in the Prince’s army whom he had corrupted, to be informed of everything done there to his prejudice.  By all this I learnt that the Prince had no great understanding with the Court, and upon his arrival at Ruel I ventured to go thither.

Both the Queen and the Cardinal were extremely civil, and the latter took particular notice of the Prince’s behaviour to me, who embraced me ’en passant’ in the garden, and spoke very low to me, saying that he would be at my house next day.  He kept his word, and desired me to give him an account of the state of affairs, and when I had done so we agreed that I should continue to push the Cardinal by means of the Parliament; that I should take his Highness by night incognito to Longueil and Broussel, to assure them they should not want assistance; that the Prince de Conde should give the Queen all the marks of his respect for and attachment to her, and make all possible reparation for the dissatisfaction he had shown with regard to the Cardinal, that he might thereby insinuate himself into the Queen’s favour, and gradually dispose her to receive and fallow his counsels and hear truths against which she had always stopped her ears, and that by thus letting the Cardinal drop insensibly, rather than fall suddenly, the Prince would find himself master of the Cabinet with the Queer’s approbation, and, with the assistance of his humble servants in Council, arbiter of the national welfare.

The Queen, who went away from Paris to give her troops an opportunity to starve and attack the city, told the deputies sent by Parliament to entreat her to restore the King to Paris that she was extremely surprised and astonished; that the King used every year at that season to take the air, and that his health was much more to be regarded than the imaginary fears of the people.  The Prince de Conde, coming in at this juncture, told the President and councillors, who invited him to take his seat in Parliament, that he would not come, but obey the Queen though it should prove his ruin.  The Duc d’Orleans said that he would not be there either, because the Parliament had made such proposals as were too bold to be endured, and the Prince de Conti spoke after the same manner.