The next day the King’s Council carried an order of Council to Parliament to put a stop to their debates against foreigners being in the Ministry.  This so excited the Parliament that they made a remonstrance in writing, instructed the ‘prevot des marchands’ to provide for the safety of the city, ordered all other governors to keep the passages free, and resolved next day to continue the debate against foreign ministers.  I laboured all night to ward off the fatal blow, which I was afraid would hurry the Prince, against his will, into the arms of the Court.  But when next day came, the members inflamed one another before they sat, through the cursed spirit of formality, and the very men who two days ago were all fear and trembling were suddenly transported, they knew not why, from a well-grounded fear to a blind rage, so that without reflecting that the General had arrived whose very name made them tremble, because they suspected him to be in the interest of the Court, they issued the said decree, which obliged the Queen to send the Duc d’Anjou,—­[Philippe of France, only brother to King Louis XIV., afterwards Duc d’Orleans, died suddenly at St. Cloud, in 1701.]—­but just recovered from the smallpox, and the Duchesse d’Orleans, much indisposed, out of town.

This would have begun a civil war next day had not the Prince de Conde taken the wisest measures imaginable, though he had a very bad opinion of the Cardinal, both upon the public account and his own, and was as little pleased with the conduct of the Parliament, with whom there was no dealing, either as a body or as private persons.  The Prince kept an even pace between the Court and country factions, and he said these words to me, which I can never forget: 

“Mazarin does not know what he is doing, and will ruin the State if care be not taken; the Parliament really goes on too fast, as you said they would; if they did but manage according to our scheme, we should be able to settle our own business and that of the public, too; they act with precipitation, and were I to do so, it is probable I should gain more by it than they.  But I am Louis de Bourbon, and will not endanger the State.  Are those devils in square caps mad to force me either to begin a civil war tomorrow or to ruin every man of them, and set over our heads a Sicilian vagabond who will destroy us all at last?”

In fine, the Prince proposed to set out immediately for Ruel to divert the Court from their project of attacking Paris, and to propose to the Queen that the Duc d’Orleans and himself should write to the Parliament to send deputies to confer about means to relieve the necessities of the State.  The Prince saw that I was so overcome at this proposal that he said to me with tenderness, “How different you are from the man you are represented to be at Court!  Would to God that all those rogues in the Ministry were but as well inclined as you!”