I was pestered for five hours with a parcel of idle rumours of ruin and destruction, which rather diverted than alarmed me, for though the Prince de Conde, distrusting his brother the Prince de Conti, had surprised him in bed and carried him off with him to Saint Germain, yet I did not question but that, as long as Madame de Longueville stayed in Paris, we should see him again, the rather because his brother neither feared nor valued him sufficiently to put him under arrest, and I was assured that M. de Longueville would be in Paris that evening by having received a letter from himself.

The King was no sooner gone than the Parliament met, frightened out of their senses, and I know not what they could have done if we had not found a way to change their fears into a resolution to make a bold stand.  I have observed a thousand times that there are some kinds of fear only to be removed by higher degrees of terror.  I caused it to be signified to the Parliament that there was in the Hotel de Ville a letter from his Majesty to the magistrates, containing the reasons that had obliged him to leave his good city of Paris, which were in effect that some of the officers of the House held a correspondence with the enemies of the Government, and had conspired to seize his person.

The Parliament, considering this letter and that the President le Feron, ‘prevot des marchands’, was a creature of the Court, ordered the citizens to arms, the gates to be secured, and the ‘prevot des marchands’ and the ‘lieutenant de police’ to keep open the necessary passages for provisions.

Having thought it good policy that the first public step of resistance should be taken by the Parliament to justify the disobedience of private persons, I then invented this stratagem to render me the more excusable to the Queen for not going to Saint Germain.  Having taken leave of all friends and rejected all their entreaties for my stay in Paris, I took coach as if I were driving to Court, but, by good luck, met with an eminent timber-merchant, a very good friend of mine, at the end of Notre-Dame Street, who was very much out of humour, set upon my postilion, and threatened my coachman.  The people came and overturned my coach, and the women, shrieking, carried me back to my own house.

I wrote to the Queen and Prince, signifying how sorry I was that I had met with such a stoppage; but the Queen treated the messenger with scorn and contempt.  The Prince, at the same time that he pitied me, could not help showing his anger.  La Riviere attacked me with railleries and invectives, and the messenger thought they were sure of putting the rope about all our necks on the morrow.