squeeze him until he
gave up all the gold he had swallowed. Nothing, therefore, was settled
that day, as Emery's head was not steady enough for business after such
an occurrence.

On the next day Mathieu Mole, the chief president, whose courage at
this crisis, says the Cardinal de Retz, was equal to that of the Duc
de Beaufort and the Prince de Conde--in other words, of the two men who
were considered the bravest in France--had been attacked in his turn.
The people threatened to hold him responsible for the evils that
hung over them. But the chief president had replied with his habitual
coolness, without betraying either disturbance or surprise, that should
the agitators refuse obedience to the king's wishes he would have
gallows erected in the public squares and proceed at once to hang the
most active among them. To which the others had responded that they
would be glad to see the gallows erected; they would serve for the
hanging of those detestable judges who purchased favor at court at the
price of the people's misery.

Nor was this all. On the eleventh the queen in going to mass at Notre
Dame, as she always did on Saturdays, was followed by more than two
hundred women demanding justice. These poor creatures had no bad
intentions. They wished only to be allowed to fall on their knees before
their sovereign, and that they might move her to compassion; but they
were prevented by the royal guard and the queen proceeded on her way,
haughtily disdainful of their entreaties.

At length parliament was convoked; the authority of the king was to be
maintained.

One day--it was the morning of the day my story begins--the king, Louis
XIV., then ten years of age, went in state, under pretext of returning
thanks for his recovery from the small-pox, to Notre Dame. He took
the opportunity of calling out his guard, the Swiss troops and the
musketeers, and he had planted them round the Palais Royal, on the
quays, and on the Pont Neuf. After mass the young monarch drove to the
Parliament House, where, upon the throne, he hastily confirmed not only
such edicts as he had already passed, but issued new ones, each
one, according to Cardinal de Retz, more ruinous than the others--a
proceeding which drew forth a strong remonstrance from the chief
president, Mole--whilst President Blancmesnil and Councillor Broussel
raised their voices in indignation against fresh taxes.

The king returned amidst the silence of a vast multitude to the