Parliament's alembic.

The Bernardin, being tutored by us beforehand what to say when he came
before the Parliament, behaved like a man of good sense.

When he desired audience, or rather when the Prince de Conti desired it
for him, the President de Mesmes, a man of great capacity, but by fear
and ambition most slavishly attached to the Court, made an eloquent and
pathetic harangue, preferable to anything I ever met with of the kind in
all the monuments of antiquity, and, turning about to the Prince de
Conti, "Is it possible, monsieur," said he, "that a Prince of the blood
of France should propose to let a person deputed from the most bitter
enemy of the fleurs-de-lis have a seat upon those flowers?" Then turning
to me, he said, "What, monsieur, will you refuse entrance to your
sovereign's herald upon the most trifling pretexts?" I knew what was
coming, and therefore I endeavoured to stop his mouth by this answer:
"Monsieur, you will excuse me from calling those reasons frivolous which
have had the sanction of a decree." The bulk of the Parliament was
provoked at the President's unguarded expression, baited him very
fiercely, and then I made some pretence to go out, leaving Quatresous, a
young man of the warmest temper, in the House to skirmish with him in my
stead, as having experienced more than once that the only way to get
anything of moment passed in Parliamentary or other assemblies is to
exasperate the young men against the old ones.

In short, after many debates, it was carried that the envoy should be
admitted to audience. Being accordingly admitted, and bidden to be
covered and sit down, he presented the Archduke's credentials, and then
made a speech, which was in substance that his master had ordered him to
acquaint the company with a proposal made him by Cardinal Mazarin since
the blockade of Paris, which his Catholic Majesty did not think
consistent with his 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 Archdu