This first act finished, the second was announced by the discourse of the Keeper of the Seals, the force of which penetrated all the Parliament.  General consternation spread itself over their faces.  Scarcely one of the members dared to speak to his neighbour.  I remarked that the Abbe Pucelle, who, although only counsellor-clerk, was upon the forms in front of me, stood, so that he might hear better every time the Keeper of the Seals spoke.  Bitter grief, obviously full of vexation, obscured the visage of the Chief-President.  Shame and confusion were painted there.

After the vote, and when the Keeper of the Seals had pronounced, I saw the principal members of the Parliament in commotion.  The Chief-President was about to speak.  He did so by uttering the remonstrance of the Parliament, full of the most subtle and impudent malice against the Regent, and of insolence against the King.  The villain trembled, nevertheless, in pronouncing it.  His voice broken, his eyes constrained, his flurry and confusion, contradicted the venomous words he uttered; libations he could not abstain from offering to himself and his company.  This was the moment when I relished, with delight utterly impossible to express, the sight of these haughty lawyers (who had dared to refuse us the salutation), prostrated upon their knees, and rendering, at our feet, homage to the throne, whilst we sat covered upon elevated seats, at the side of that same throne.  These situations and these postures, so widely disproportioned, plead of themselves with all the force of evidence, the cause of those who are really and truly ‘laterales regis’ against this ‘vas electum’ of the third estate.  My eyes fixed, glued, upon these haughty bourgeois, with their uncovered heads humiliated to the level of our feet, traversed the chief members kneeling or standing, and the ample folds of those fur robes of rabbit-skin that would imitate ermine, which waved at each long and redoubled genuflexion; genuflexions which only finished by command of the King.

The remonstrance being finished, the Keeper of the Seals mentioned to the King their wishes, asking further opinions; took his place again; cast his eyes on the Chief-President, and said:  The King wishes to be obeyed, and obeyed immediately.

This grand speech was a thunder-bolt which overturned councillors and presidents in the most marked manner.  All of them lowered their heads, and the majority kept them lowered for a long time.  The rest of the spectators, except the marshals of France, appeared little affected by this desolation.

But this—­an ordinary triumph—­was nothing to that which was to follow.  After an interval of some few minutes, the Keeper of the Seals went up again to the King, returned to his place, and remained there in silence some little time.  Then everybody clearly saw that the Parliamentary affair being finished, something else must be in the wind.  Some thought that a dispute which the Dukes had had with the Parliament, concerning one of its usurpations, was now to be settled in our favour.  Others who had noticed the absence of the bastards, guessed it was something that affected them; but nobody divined what, much less its extent.