Then the informations were read against what they called “the public conspiracy from which it had pleased Almighty God to deliver the State and the royal family,” after which I made a speech, in substance as follows: 

“I do not believe, gentlemen, that in any of the past ages persons of our quality had ever received any personal summons grounded merely upon hearsay.  Neither can I think that posterity will ever believe that this hearsay evidence was admitted from the mouths of the most infamous miscreants that ever got out of a gaol.  Canto was condemned to the gallows at Pau, Pichon to the wheel at Mans, Sociande is a rogue upon record.  Pray, gentlemen, judge of their evidence by their character and profession.  But this is not all.  They have the distinguishing character of being informers by authority.  I am sorely grieved that the defence of our honour, which is enjoined us by the laws of God and man, should oblige me to expose to light, under the most innocent of Kings, such abominations as were detested in the most corrupt ages of antiquity and under the worst of tyrants.  But I must tell you that Canto, Sociande, and Gorgibus are authorised to inform against us by a commission signed by that august name which should never be employed but for the preservation of the most sacred laws, and which Cardinal Mazarin, who knows no law but that of revenge, which he meditates against the defenders of the public liberty, has forced M. Tellier, Secretary of State, to countersign.

“We demand justice, gentlemen, but we do not demand it of you till we have first most humbly implored this House to execute the strictest justice that the laws have provided against rebels, if it appears that we have been concerned directly or indirectly in raising this last disturbance.  Is it possible, gentlemen, that a grandchild of Henri the Great, that a senator of M. Broussel’s age and probity, and that the Coadjutor of Paris should be so much as suspected of being concerned in a sedition raised by a hot-brained fool, at the head of fifteen of the vilest of the mob?  I am fully persuaded it would be scandalous for me to insist longer on this subject.  This is all I know, gentlemen, of the modern conspiracy.”

The applause that came from the Court of Inquiry was deafening; many voices were heard exclaiming against spies and informers.  Honest Doujat, who was one of the persons appointed by the Attorney-General Talon, his kinsman, to make the report, and who had acquainted me with the facts, acknowledged it publicly by pretending to make the thing appear less odious.  He got up, therefore, as if he were in a passion, and spoke very artfully to this purpose: 

“These witnesses, monsieur, are not to accuse you, as you are pleased to say, but only to discover what passed in the meeting of the annuitants at the Hotel de Ville.  If the King did not promise impunity to such as will give him information necessary for his service, and which sometimes cannot be come at without involving evidence in a crime, how should the King be informed at all?  There is a great deal of difference between patents of this nature and commissions granted on purpose to accuse you.”