could think themselves safe by it.

The King acquainted the Duc d'Orleans that he wondered that, since
Mazarin was removed, he should delay, according to his own declaration
and promise, to lay down his arms, to renounce all associations and
treaties, and to cause the foreign troops to withdraw; and that when this
was done, those deputies that should come to his Majesty from him should
be very welcome.

On the 3d of September the Parliament resolved that their deputies should
wait upon the King with their thanks for removing Cardinal Mazarin, and
to beseech his Majesty to return to Paris; that the Duc d'Orleans and the
Prince de Conde should be desired to write to the King and assure him
they would lay down their arms as soon as his Majesty would be pleased to
send the passports for the safe retreat of the foreigners, together with
an amnesty in due form, registered in all the Parliaments of the kingdom;
and that his Majesty should be petitioned to receive the deputies of the
Princes.

Pray indulge me with a short pause here to consider the scandalous arts
which ministers palliate with the name and sacred word of a great King,
and with which the most august Parliament of the kingdom--the Court of
Peers--expose themselves to ridicule by such manifest inconsistencies as
are more becoming the levity of a college than the majesty of a senate.
In short, persons are not sensible of what they do in these State
paroxysms, which savour somewhat of frenzy. I knew in those days some
very honest men, who were so fully satisfied of the justice of the cause
of the Princes that, upon occasion, they would have laid down their lives
for it; and I also knew some eminently virtuous and disinterested men who
would as gladly have been martyrs for the Court. The ambition of great
men manages such dispositions just as it suits their own interests; they
help to blind the rest of mankind, and they even become blinder
themselves than other people.

Honest M. de Fontenay, who had been twice ambassador at Rome, a man of
great experience and good sense and a hearty well-wisher to his country,
daily condoled with me on the lethargy into which the intestine divisions
had lulled the best citizens and patriots. We saw the Spanish colours
and standards displayed upon the Pont-Neuf; the yellow sashes of Lorraine
appeared at Paris with the same liberty as the Isabelles and blue ones.
People were so accustomed to these spectacles and to the news of
pr