This arrest of M. and Madame du Maine had another effect.  For some time past, a large quantity of illicit salt had been sold throughout the country.  The people by whom this trade was conducted, ‘faux sauniers’, as they were called, travelled over the provinces in bands well armed and well organized.  So powerful had they become that troops were necessary in order to capture them.  There were more than five thousand faux saumers, who openly carried on their traffic in Champagne and Picardy.  They had become political instruments in the hands of others, being secretly encouraged and commanded by those who wished to sow trouble in the land.  It could not be hidden that these ‘faux sauniers’ were redoubtable by their valour and their arrangements; that the people were favourable to them, buying as they did from them salt at a low price, and irritated as they were against the gabelle and other imposts; that these ‘faux sauniers’ spread over all the realm, and often marching in large bands, which beat all opposed to them, were dangerous people, who incited the population by their examples to opposition against the government.

I had proposed on one occasion the abolition of the salt tax to the Regent, as a remedy for these evils; but my suggestion shared the fate of many others.  It was favourably listened to, and nothing more.  And meanwhile the ‘faux sauniers’ had gone on increasing.  I had no difficulty in discovering by whom they were encouraged, and the event showed I was right.  Directly after the arrest of M. and Madame du Maine, the ‘faux sauniers’ laid down their arms, asked, and obtained pardon.  This prompt submission showed dearly enough by whom they had been employed, and for what reason.  I had uselessly told M. le Duc d’Orleans so long before, who admitted that I was right, but did nothing.  It was his usual plan.

Let me finish at once with all I shall have to say respecting M. and Madame du Maine.

They remained in their prisons during the whole of the year 1719, supplied with all the comforts and attentions befitting their state, and much less rigorously watched than at first, thanks to the easy disposition of M. le Duc d’Orleans, whose firmness yielded even more rapidly than beauty to the effects of time.  The consequence of his indulgence towards the two conspirators was, that at about the commencement of the following year, 1720, they began to play a very ridiculous comedy, of which not a soul was the dupe; not even the public, nor the principal actors, nor the Regent.

The Duc and Duchesse du Maine, thanks to the perfidy of the Abbe Dubois, had had time to hide away all their papers, and to arrange together the different parts they should play.  Madame du Maine, supported by her sex and birth, muffled herself up in her dignity, when replying to the questions addressed to her, of which just as many, and no more, were read to the replying counsel as pleased the Abbe Dubois; and strongly accusing Cellamare and others; protected as much as possible her friends, her husband above all, by charging herself with all; by declaring that what she had done M. du Maine had no knowledge of; and that its object went no farther than to obtain from the Regent such reforms in his administration as were wanted.