s safety or honour to accept, when he saw that, on the
one hand, it was made with a view to oppress the Parliament, which was
held in veneration by all the kingdoms in the world, and, on the other,
that all treaties made with a condemned minister would be null and void,
forasmuch as they were made without the concurrence of the Parliament, to
whom only it belonged to register and verify treaties of peace in order
to make them authoritative; that the Catholic King, who proposed to take
no advantage from the present state of affairs, had ordered the Archduke
to assure the Parliament, whom he knew to be in the true interest of the
most Christian King, that he heartily acknowledged them to be the
arbiters of peace, that he submitted to their judgment, and that if they
thought proper to be judges, he left it to their choice to send a
deputation out of their own body to what place they pleased. Paris itself
not excepted, and that his Catholic Majesty would also, without delay,
send his deputies thither to meet and treat with them; that, meanwhile,
he had ordered 18,000 men to march towards their frontiers to relieve
them in case of need, with orders nevertheless to commit no hostilities
upon the towns, etc., of the most Christian King, though they were for
the most part abandoned; and it being his resolution at this juncture to
show his sincere inclination for peace, he gave them his word of honour
that his armies should not stir during the treaty; but that in case his
troops might be serviceable to the Parliament, they were at their
disposal, to be commanded by French officers; and that to obviate all the
reasonable jealousies generally, attending the conduct of foreigners,
they, were at liberty to take all other precautions they should think
proper.

Before his admission the Prdsident de Mesmes had loaded me with
invectives, for secretly corresponding with the enemies of the State, for
favouring his admission, and for opposing that of my sovereign's herald.

I had observed that when the objections against a man are capable of
making greater impression than his answers, it is his best course to say
but little, and that he may talk as much as he pleases when he thinks his
answers of greater force than the objections. I kept strictly to this
rule, for though the said President artfully pointed his satire at me, I
sat unconcerned till I found the Parliament was charmed with what the
envoy had said, and then, in my turn, I was