“You are convinced of the Cardinal’s extravagances, and that his only view is to establish in France a form of government known nowhere but in Italy.  If he should succeed, will the State be a gainer by it, according to its only true maxims?  Would it be an advantage to the Princes of the blood in any sense?  But, besides, has he any likelihood of succeeding?  Is he not loaded with the odium and contempt of the public? and is not the Parliament the idol they revere?  I know you despise them because the Court is so well armed, but let me tell you that they are so confident of their power that they feel their importance.  They are come to that pass that they do not value your forces, and though the evil is that at present their strength consists only in their imagination, yet a time may come when they may be able to do whatever they now think it in their power to do.

“Your Highness lately told me that this disposition of the people was only smoke; but be assured that smoke so dark and thick proceeds from a brisk fire, which the Parliament blows, and, though they mean well, may blaze up into such a flame as may consume themselves and again hazard the destruction of the State, which has been the case more than once.  Bodies of men, when once exasperated by a Ministry, always aggravate their failures, and scarcely ever show them any favour, which, in some cases, is enough to ruin a kingdom.

“If, when the proposition was formerly made to the Parliament by the Cardinal to declare whether they intended to set bounds to the royal authority, if, I say, they had not wisely eluded the ridiculous and dangerous question, France would have run a great risk, in my opinion, of being entirely ruined; for had they answered in the affirmative, as they were on the point of doing, they would have rent the veil that covers the mysteries of State.  Every monarchy has its peculiar veil; that of France consists in a kind of religious and sacred silence, which, by the subjects generally paying a blind obedience to their Kings, muffles up that right which they think they have to dispense with their obedience in cases where a complaisance to their Kings would be a prejudice to themselves.  It is a wonder that the Parliament did not strip off this veil by a formal decree.  This has had much worse consequences since the people have taken the liberty to look through it.

“Your Highness cannot by the force of arms prevent these dangerous consequences, which, perhaps, are already too near at hand.  You see that even the Parliament can hardly restrain the people whom they have roused; that the contagion is spread into the provinces, and you know that Guienne and Provence are entirely governed by the example of Paris.  Every thing shakes and totters, and it is your Highness only that can set us right, because of the splendour of your birth and reputation, and the generally received opinion that none but you can do it.