e if care
be not taken; the Parliament really goes on too fast, as you said they
would; if they did but manage according to our scheme, we should be able
to settle our own business and that of the public, too; they act with
precipitation, and were I to do so, it is probable I should gain more by
it than they. But I am Louis de Bourbon, and will not endanger the
State. Are those devils in square caps mad to force me either to begin a
civil war tomorrow or to ruin every man of them, and set over our heads a
Sicilian vagabond who will destroy us all at last?"

In fine, the Prince proposed to set out immediately for Ruel to divert
the Court from their project of attacking Paris, and to propose to the
Queen that the Duc d'Orleans and himself should write to the Parliament
to send deputies to confer about means to relieve the necessities of the
State. The Prince saw that I was so overcome at this proposal that he
said to me with tenderness, "How different you are from the man you are
represented to be at Court! Would to God that all those rogues in the
Ministry were but as well inclined as you!"

I told the Prince that, considering how the minds of the Parliament were
embittered, I doubted whether they would care to confer with the
Cardinal; that his Highness would gain a considerable point if he could
prevail with the Court not to insist upon the necessity of the Cardinal's
presence, because then all the honour of the arrangement, in which the
Duc d'Orleans, as usual, would only be as a cipher, would redound to him,
and that such exclusion of the Cardinal would disgrace his Ministry to
the last degree, and be a very proper preface to the blow which the
Prince designed to give him in the Cabinet.

The Prince profited by the hint, so that the Parliament returned answer
that they would send deputies to confer with the Princes only, which last
words the Prince artfully laid hold of and advised Mazarin not to expose
himself by coming to the conference against the Parliament's consent, but
rather, like a wise man, to make a virtue of the present necessity. This
was a cruel blow to the Cardinal, who ever since the decease of the late
King had been recognised as Prime Minister of France; and the
consequences were equally disastrous.

The deputies being accordingly admitted to a conference with the Duc
d'Orleans, the Princes de Conde and Conti and M. de Longueville, the
First President, Viole, who had moved in Parliament that