mittance.

On the 14th the Prince de Conde went to Parliament and demanded that a
committee might be appointed to inquire into the attempt made on his
life.

The Frondeurs were not asleep in the meantime, yet most of our friends
were dispirited, and all very weak.

The cures of Paris were my most hearty friends; they laboured with
incredible zeal among the people. And the cure of Saint Gervais sent me
this message: "Do but rally again and get off the assassination, and in a
week you will be stronger than your enemies."

I was informed that the Queen had written to my uncle, the Archbishop of
Paris, to be sure to go to the Parliament on the 23d, the day that
Beaufort, Broussel, and I were to be impeached, because I had no right to
sit in the House if he were present. I begged of him not to go, but my
uncle being a man of little sense, and that much out of order, and being,
moreover, fearful and ridiculously jealous of me, had promised the Queen
to go; and all that we could get out of him was that he would defend me
in Parliament better than I could defend myself. It is to be observed
that though he chattered to us like a magpie in private, yet in public he
was as mute as a fish. A surgeon who was in the Archbishop's service,
going to visit him, commended him for his courage in resisting the
importunities of his nephew, who, said he, had a mind to bury him alive,
and encouraged him to rise with all haste and go to the Parliament House;
but he was no sooner out of his bed than the surgeon asked him in a
fright how he felt. "Very well," said my Lord. "But that is
impossible," said the surgeon; "you look like death," and feeling his
pulse, he told him he was in a high fever; upon which my Lord Archbishop
went to bed again, and all the kings and queens in Christendom could not
get him out for a fortnight.

We went to the Parliament, and found there the Princes with nearly a
thousand gentlemen and, I may say, the whole Court. I had few salutes in
the Hall, because it was generally thought I was an undone man. When I
had entered the Great Chamber I heard a hum like that at the end of a
pleasing period in a sermon. When I had taken my place I said that,
hearing we were taxed with a seditious conspiracy, we were come to offer
our heads to the Parliament if guilty, and if innocent, to demand justice
upon our accusers; and that though I knew not what right the Court had to
call me to account, yet I would renounce all privilege