Niort, and other places whereof he was
already master. The Parliament thanked him, passed a decree with full
powers accordingly, and desired him to hasten his levies with all
expedition.

Posterity will hardly believe that, notwithstanding all this heat in the
party, which one would have thought could not have immediately
evaporated, a peace was made and signed the same day; but of this more by
and by.

While the Court, as has been before hinted, was tampering with the
generals, Madame de Montbazon promised M. de Beaufort's support to the
Queen; but her Majesty understood that it was not to be done if I were
not at the market to approve of the sale. La Riviere despised M.
d'Elbeuf no longer. M. de Bouillon, since his brother's declaration,
seemed more inclined than before to come to an arrangement with the
Court, but his pretentions ran very high, and both the brothers were in
such a situation that a little assistance would not suffice, and as to
the offers made to myself by Madame de Lesdiguieres, I returned such an
answer as convinced the Court that I was not so easily to be moved.

In short, Cardinal Mazarin found all the avenues to a negotiation either
shut or impassable. This despair of success in the Court was eventually
more to the advantage of the Court than the most refined politics, for it
did not hinder them from negotiating, the Cardinal's natural temper not
permitting him to do otherwise; but, however, he could not trust to the
carrying out of negotiations, and therefore beguiled our generals with
fair promises, while he remitted 800,000 livres to buy off the army of M.
de Turenne, and obliged the deputies at Ruel to sign a peace against the
orders of the Parliament that sent them. The President de Mesmes assured
me several times since that this peace was purely the result of a
conversation he had with the Cardinal on the 8th of March at night, when
his Eminence told him he saw plainly that M. de Bouillon would not treat
till he had the Spaniards and M. de Turenne at the gates of Paris; that
is, till he saw himself in the position to seize one-half of the kingdom.
The President made him this answer:

"There is no hope of any security but in making the Coadjutor a
cardinal."

To which Mazarin answered: "He is worse than the other, who at least
seemed once inclined to treat, but he is still for a general peace, or
for none at all."

President de Mesmes replied: "If things are come to this pass we