erground." I sat up
accordingly all night to prepare instructions for Saint-Ibal to treat
with the Count Fuensaldagne, and oblige him to march with the Spanish
army, in case of need, to our assistance, and was just going to send him
away to Brussels when M. de Chatillon, my friend and kinsman, who
mortally hated the Cardinal, came to tell me that the Prince de Conde
would be the next day at Ruel; that the Prince was enraged against the
Cardinal, and was sure he would ruin the State if he were let alone, and
that the Cardinal held a correspondence in cipher with a fellow in the
Prince's army whom he had corrupted, to be informed of everything done
there to his prejudice. By all this I learnt that the Prince had no
great understanding with the Court, and upon his arrival at Ruel I
ventured to go thither.

Both the Queen and the Cardinal were extremely civil, and the latter took
particular notice of the Prince's behaviour to me, who embraced me 'en
passant' in the garden, and spoke very low to me, saying that he would be
at my house next day. He kept his word, and desired me to give him an
account of the state of affairs, and when I had done so we agreed that I
should continue to push the Cardinal by means of the Parliament; that I
should take his Highness by night incognito to Longueil and Broussel, to
assure them they should not want assistance; that the Prince de Conde
should give the Queen all the marks of his respect for and attachment to
her, and make all possible reparation for the dissatisfaction he had
shown with regard to the Cardinal, that he might thereby insinuate
himself into the Queen's favour, and gradually dispose her to receive and
fallow his counsels and hear truths against which she had always stopped
her ears, and that by thus letting the Cardinal drop insensibly, rather
than fall suddenly, the Prince would find himself master of the Cabinet
with the Queer's approbation, and, with the assistance of his humble
servants in Council, arbiter of the national welfare.

The Queen, who went away from Paris to give her troops an opportunity to
starve and attack the city, told the deputies sent by Parliament to
entreat her to restore the King to Paris that she was extremely surprised
and astonished; that the King used every year at that season to take the
air, and that his health was much more to be regarded than the imaginary
fears of the people. The Prince de Conde, coming in at this juncture,
told the Presid