desire his Royal Highness to use his interest on this occasion in favour
of the said Princes.

The King's Council having waited on her Majesty with the remonstrances
aforesaid, she pretended to be under medical treatment, and put off the
matter a week longer. The Duc d'Orleans also gave an ambiguous answer.
The Queen's course of treatment continued eight or ten days longer than
she imagined, or, rather, than she said, and consequently the
remonstrances of the Parliament were not made till the 20th of January,
1651.

On the 28th the First President made his report, and said the Queen had
promised to return an answer in a few days.

It happened very luckily for us at this time that the imprudence of the
Cardinal was greater than the inconstancy of the Duc d'Orleans, for a
little before the Queen returned an answer to the remonstrances, he
talked very roughly to the Duke in the Queen's presence, charging him
with putting too much confidence in me. The very day that the Queen made
the aforesaid answer he spoke yet more arrogantly to the Duke in her
Majesty's apartment, comparing M. de Beaufort and myself to Cromwell and
Fairfax in the House of Commons in England, and exclaimed furiously in
the King's presence, so that he frightened the Duke, who was glad he got
out of the King's Palace with a whole skin, and who said that he would
never put himself again in the power of that furious woman, meaning the
Queen, because she had improved on what the Cardinal had said to the
King. I resolved to strike the iron while it was hot, and joined with M.
de Beaufort to persuade his Royal Highness to declare himself the next
day in Parliament. We showed him that, after what had lately passed,
there was no safety for his person, and if the King should go out of
Paris, as the Cardinal designed, we should be engaged in a civil war,
whereof he alone, with the city of Paris, must bear the heavy load; that
it would be equally scandalous and dangerous for his Royal Highness
either to leave the Princes in chains, after having treated with them,
or, by his dilatory proceedings, suffer Mazarin to have all the honour of
setting them at liberty, and that he ought by all means to go to the
Parliament House.

The Duchess, too, seconded us, and upon his Highness saying that if he
went to the House to declare against the Court the Cardinal would be sure
to take his Majesty out of Paris, the Duchess replied, "What, monsieur,
are you not Lieutenant-Ge