to the Duke:
"I told you beforehand that you would be swayed by the Coadjutor."
The Duke replied: "What! madame, would you have the Coadjutor, for our
sakes only, run the risk of being no more than chaplain to Fuensaldagne?
Is it possible that you cannot comprehend what he has been preaching to
you for these last three days?"
I replied to her with a great deal of temper, and said, "Don't you think
that we shall act more securely when our troops are out of Paris, when we
receive the Archduke's answer, and when Turenne has made a public
declaration?"
"Yes, I do," she said, "but the Parliament will take one step to-morrow
which will render all your preliminaries of no use."
"Never fear, madame," said I, "I will undertake that, if our measures
succeed, we shall be in a condition to despise all that the Parliament
can do."
"Will you promise it?" she asked.
"Yes," said I, "and, more than that, I am ready to seal it with my
blood."
She took me at my word, and though the Duke used all the arguments with
her which he could think of, she bound my thumb with silk, and with a
needle drew blood, with which she obliged me to sign a promissory note as
follows: "I promise to Madame la Duchesse de Bouillon to continue united
with the Duke her husband against the Parliament in case M. de Turenne
approaches with the army under his command within twenty leagues of Paris
and declares for the city." M. de Bouillon threw it into the fire, and
endeavoured to convince the Duchess of what I had said, that if our
preliminaries should succeed we should still stand upon our own bottom,
notwithstanding all that the Parliament could do, and that if they did
miscarry we should still have the satisfaction of not being the authors
of a confusion which would infallibly cover me with shame and ruin, and
be an uncertain advantage to the family of De Bouillon.
During this discussion a captain in M. d'Elbeuf's regiment of Guards was
seen to throw money to the crowd to encourage them to go to the
Parliament House and cry out, "No peace!" upon which M. de Bouillon and I
agreed to send the Duke these words upon the back of a card: "It will be
dangerous for you to be at the Parliament House to-morrow." M. d'Elbeuf
came in all haste to the Palace of Bouillon to know the meaning of this
short caution. M. de Bouillon told him he had heard that the people had
got a notion that both the Duke and himself held a correspondence with
Mazarin, and that
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