table rest; that we were falling
into a worse condition than we were in before, because the State suffered
more by the daily negotiations carried on with Mazarin than it had done
by his administrations; and that the Queen was still buoyed up with hopes
of his reestablishment.

The Prince de Conde having inflamed the Parliament, to make himself more
formidable to the Queen and Court, some new scenes were opened every day.
At one time they sent to the provinces to inform against the Cardinal; at
another time they made search after his effects at Paris.

I went one day with four hundred men in my company to the Parliament
House, where the Prince de Conde inveighed against the exportation of
money out of the kingdom by the Cardinal's banker. But afterwards I
absented myself for awhile from Parliament, which made me suspected of
being less an enemy to the Cardinal, and I was pelted with a dozen or
fifteen libels in the space of a fortnight, by a fellow whose nose had
been slit for writing a lampoon against a lady of quality. I composed a
short but general answer to all, entitled "An Apology for the Ancient and
True Fronde." There was a strong paper war between the old and new
Fronde for three or four months, but afterwards they united in the attack
on Mazarin. There were about sixty volumes of tracts written during the
civil war, but I am sure that there are not a hundred sheets worth
reading.

I was sent for again to another private conference with the Queen, who,
dreading an arrangement with the Prince de Conde, was for his being
arrested, and advised me to consider how it might be done. It seems that
M. Hoquincourt had offered to kill him in the street, as the shortest way
to be rid of him, for she desired me to confer about it with Hoquincourt,
"who will," said she, "show you a much surer way." The Queen,
nevertheless, would not own she had ever such a thought, though she was
heard to say, "The Coadjutor is not a man of so much courage as I took
him for."

The next day I was informed that the Queen could endure the Prince no
longer, and that she had advices that he had formed a design to seize the
King; that he had despatched orders to Flanders to treat with the
Spaniards, and that either he or she must be ruined; that she was not for
shedding blood, and that what Hoquincourt proposed was far from it,
because he promised to secure the Prince without striking a blow if I
would answer for the people.

The Parliament