ops, and though M. Mold, Keeper of the Seals, was at the gate
demanding entrance for the King, the Duchess crossed the river in a
barge, made the watermen break down a little postern, which had been
walled up for a long time, and marched, with the acclamations of
multitudes of the people, directly to the Hotel de Ville, where the
magistrates were assembled to consider if they should admit the Keeper of
the Seals. By this means she turned the scale, and MM. de Beaufort and
de Nemours joined her.

The Prince de Conde arriving at Paris from Guienne on the 11th of April,
the magistrates had a meeting in the Hotel de Ville, in which they
resolved that the Governor should wait on his Royal Highness, and tell
him that the company thought it contrary to order to receive him into the
city before he had cleared himself from the King's declaration, which had
been verified in Parliament against him.

The Duc d'Orleans, who was overjoyed at this speech, said that the Prince
had only come to discourse with him about private affairs, and that he
would stay but twenty-four hours at Paris. M. de Chavigni informed the
Duke that the Prince was able to stand his ground as long as he pleased,
without being obliged to anybody; and he gathered together a mob of
scoundrels upon the Pont-Neuf, whose fingers itched to be plundering the
house of M. du Plessis Guenegaut, and by whom the Duke was frightened to
a great degree.

The reflections I had leisure to make upon my new dignity obliged me to
take great care of my hat, whose dazzling flame of colour turns the heads
of many that are honoured with it. The most palpable of those delusions
is the claiming precedence of Princes of the blood, who may become our
masters the next moment, and who at the same time are generally the
masters of all our kindred. I have a veneration for the cardinals of my
family, who made me suck in humility after their example with my mother's
milk, and I found a very happy opportunity to practise it on the very day
that I received the news of my promotion. Chateaubriant said to me,
before a vast number of people at my levee, "Now we will pay our respects
no more to the best of them," which he said because, though I was upon
ill terms with the Prince de Conde, and though I always went well
attended, I yet saluted him wherever I met him with all the respect due
to him on the score of so many titles. I said to him:

"Pray pardon me, monsieur; we shall pay our respe