o go next
day to Ruel, the place named by the Queen for the conference.

The Prince de Conti, M. de Beaufort, M. d'Elbeuf, Marechal de La Mothe,
M. de Brissac, President Bellievre, and myself met that night at M. de
Bouillon's house, where a motion was made for the generals of the army to
send a deputation likewise to the place of conference; but it was
quashed, and indeed nothing would have been more absurd than such a
proceeding when we were upon the point of concluding a treaty with Spain;
and, considering that we told the envoy that we should never have
consented to hold any conference with the Court were we not assured that
it was in our power to break it off at pleasure by means of the people.

The Parliament having lately reproached both the generals and troops with
being afraid to venture without the gates, M. de Bouillon, seeing the
danger was over, proposed at this meeting, for the satisfaction of the
citizens, to carry them to a camp betwixt the Marne and the Seine, where
they might be as safe as at Paris. The motion was agreed to without
consulting the Parliament, and, accordingly, on the 4th of March, the
troops marched out and the deputies of Parliament went to Ruel.

The Court party flattered themselves that, upon the marching of the
militia out of Paris, the citizens, being left to themselves, would
become more tractable, and the President de Mesmes made his boast of what
he said to the generals, to persuade them to encamp their army. But
Senneterre, one of the ablest men at Court, soon penetrated our designs
and undeceived the Court. He told the First President and De Mesmes that
they were beguiled and that they would see it in a little time. The
First President, who could never see two different things at one view,
was so overjoyed when he heard the forces had gone out of Paris that he
cried out:

"Now the Coadjutor will have no more mercenary brawlers at the Parliament
House."

"Nor," said the President de Mesmes, "so many cutthroats."

Senneterre, like a wise man, said to them both:

"It is not the Coadjutor's interest to murder you, but to bring you
under. The people would serve his turn for the first if he aimed at it,
and the army is admirably well encamped for the latter. If he is not a
more honest man than he is looked upon to be here, we are likely to have
a tedious civil war."

The Cardinal confessed that Senneterre was in the right, for, on the one
hand, the Prince de Conde perc