A servant awaited me at the top of the staircase, and the concierge of the Palais Royal at the door of M. le Duc d’Orleans’ room, with orders to beg me to write.  It was the sacred hour of the roues and the supper, at which all idea of business was banished.  I wrote, therefore, to the Regent in his winter cabinet what I had just done, not without some little indignation that he could not give up his pleasure for an affair of this importance.  I was obliged to beg the concierge not to give my note to M. le Duc d’Orleans unless he were in a state to read it and to burn it afterwards.

Our preparations for the Bed of justice continued to be actively but silently made during the next few days.  In the course of the numberless discussions which arose upon the subject, it was agreed, after much opposition on my part, to strike a blow, not only at the Parliament, but at M. du Maine, who had fomented its discontent.  M. le Duc, who had been admitted to our councils, and who was heart and soul against the bastards, proposed that at the Bed of justice the education of the young King should be taken out of the control of M. du Maine and placed in his hands.  He proposed also that the title of Prince of the Blood should be taken from him, with all the privileges it conferred, and that he should be reduced to the rank of a simple Duke and Peer, taking his place among the rest according to the date of his erection; thus, at a bound, going down to the bottom of the peerage!

Should these memoirs ever see the light, every one who reads them will be able to judge how such a proposition as this harmonised with my personal wishes.  I had seen the bastards grow in rank and importance with an indignation and disgust I could scarcely contain.  I had seen favour after favour heaped upon them by the late King, until he crowned all by elevating them to the rank of Princes of the Blood in defiance of all law, of all precedent, of all decency, if I must say the word.  What I felt at this accumulation of honours I have more than once expressed; what I did to oppose such monstrous innovations has also been said.  No man could be more against M. du Maine than I, and yet I opposed this proposition of M. le Duc because I thought one blow was enough at a time, and that it might be dangerous to attempt the two at once.  M. du Maine had supporters, nay; he was at the head of a sort of party; strip him of the important post he held, and what might not his rake, his disappointment, and his wounded ambition lead him to attempt?  Civil war, perhaps, would be the result of his disgrace.