So in fact it seemed to, be; for although the Parliament commenced the trial, and issued an order of arrest against the Cardinal, they soon found themselves stopped by difficulties which arose, and by this immunity of the cardinals, which was supported by many examples.  After all the fuss made, therefore, this cause fell by its own weakness, and exhaled itself, so to speak, in insensible perspiration.  A fine lesson this for the most powerful princes, and calculated to teach them that if they want to be served by Rome they should favour those that are there, instead of raising their own subjects, who, out of Rome, can be of no service to the State; and who are good only to seize three or four hundred thousand livres a year in benefices, with the quarter of which an Italian would be more than recompensed.  A French cardinal in France is the friend of the Pope, but the enemy of the King, the Church, and the State; a tyrant very often to the clergy and the ministers, at liberty to do what he likes without ever being punished for anything.

As nothing could be done in this way against the Cardinal, other steps were taken.  The fraudulent “Genealogical History of the House of Auvergne,” which I have previously alluded to, was suppressed by royal edict, and orders given that all the copies of it should be seized.  Baluze, who had written it, was deprived of his chair of Professor of the Royal College, and driven out of the realm.  A large quantity of copies of this edict were printed and publicly distributed.  The little patrimony that Cardinal de Bouillon had not been able to carry away, was immediately confiscated:  the temporality of his benefices had been already seized, and on the 7th of July appeared a declaration from the King, which, depriving the Cardinal of all his advowsons, distributed them to the bishops of the dioceses in which those advowsons were situated.

These blows were very sensibly felt by the other Bouillons, but it was no time for complaint.  The Cardinal himself became more enraged than ever.  Even up to this time he had kept so little within bounds that he had pontifically officiated in the church of Tournai at the Te Deum for the taking of Douai (by the enemies); and from that town (Tournai), where he had fixed his residence, he wrote a long letter to M. de Beauvais,—­ bishop of the place, when it yielded, and who would not sing the Te Deum, exhorting him to return to Tournai and submit to the new rule.  Some time after this, that is to say, towards the end of the year, he was guilty of even greater presumption.  The Abbey of Saint-Arnaud, in Flanders, had just been given by the King to Cardinal La Tremoille, who had been confirmed in his possession by bulls from the Pope.  Since then the abbey had fallen into the power of the enemy.  Upon this, Cardinal de Bouillon caused himself to be elected Abbot by a minority of the monks and in spite of the opposition of the others.  It was curious to see this dutiful son of Rome, who had declared in his letter to the King, that he thought of nothing except the dignity of the King, and how he could best. serve God and the Church, thus elect him self in spite of the bull of the Pope, in spite of the orders of the King, and enjoy by force the revenues of the abbey, protected solely by heretics!