forbidding them to assemble under pain of being treated as rebels.  They met, nevertheless, in defiance of the said decree, and had several days’ consultation, upon which the Duc d’Orleans, who was very sensible they would never comply, proposed an accommodation.  Accordingly Cardinal Mazarin and the Chancellor made some proposals, which were rejected with indignation.  The Parliament affected to be altogether concerned for the good of the public, and issued a decree obliging themselves to continue their session and to make humble remonstrances to the King for annulling the decrees of the Council.

The King’s Council having obtained audience of the Queen for the Parliament, the First President strenuously urged the great necessity of inviolably preferring that golden mean between the King and the subject; proved that the Parliament had been for many ages in possession of full authority to unite and assemble; complained against the annulling of their decree of union, and concluded with a very earnest motion for suppressing decrees of the Supreme Council made in opposition to theirs.  The Court, being moved more by the disposition of the people than by the remonstrances of the Parliament, complied immediately, and ordered the King’s Council to acquaint the Parliament that the King would permit the act of union to be executed, and that they might assemble and act in concert with the other bodies for the good of the State.

You may judge how the Cabinet was mortified, but the vulgar were much mistaken in thinking that the weakness of Mazarin upon this occasion gave the least blow to the royal authority.  In that conjuncture it was impossible for him to act otherwise, for if he had continued inflexible on this occasion he would certainly have been reckoned a madman and surrounded with barricades.  He only yielded to the torrent, and yet most people accused him of weakness.  It is certain this affair brought him into great contempt, and though he endeavoured to appease the people by the banishment of Emeri, yet the Parliament, perceiving what ascendancy they had over the Court, left no stone unturned to demolish the power of this overgrown favourite.

The Cardinal, made desperate by the failure of his stratagems to create jealousy among the four bodies, and alarmed at a proposition which they were going to make for cancelling all the loans made to the King upon excessive interest,—­the Cardinal, I say, being quite mad with rage and grief at these disappointments, and set on by courtiers who had most of their stocks in these loans, made the King go on horseback to the Parliament House in great pomp, and carry a wheedling declaration with him, which contained some articles very advantageous to the public, and a great many others very ambiguous.  But the people were so jealous of the Court that he went without the usual acclamations.  The declaration was soon after censured by the Parliament and the other bodies, though the Duc d’Orleans exhorted and prayed that they would not meddle with it, and threatened them if they did.