living could palliate it with smoother language.  Though I thought of this expedient before M. de Bouillon, and perhaps could have said more for it, because I saw the possibility of it much clearer than he, yet I would not give him to understand that I had thought of it, because I knew he had the vanity to love to be esteemed the first author of things, which was the only weakness I observed in his managing State affairs.  I left him an answer in writing, in substance as follows: 

“I confess the scheme is very feasible, but attended with pernicious consequences both to the public and to private persons, for the same people whom you employ to humble the magistracy will refuse you obedience when you demand from them the same homage they paid to the magistrates.  This people adored the Parliament till the beginning of the war; they are still for continuing the war, and yet abate their friendship for the Parliament.  The Parliament imagines that this applies only to some particular members who are Mazarined, but they are deceived, for their prejudice extends to the whole company, and their hatred towards Mazarin’s party supports and screens their indifference towards all the rest.  We cheer up their spirits by pasquinades and ballads and the martial sound of trumpets and kettle-drums, but, after all, do they pay their taxes as punctually as they did the first few weeks?  Are there many that have done as you and I, monsieur, who sent our plate to the mint?  Do you not observe that they who would be thought zealous for the common cause plead in favour of some acts committed by those men who are, in short, its enemies?  If the people are so tired already, what will they be long before they come to their journey’s end?

“After we have established our own authority upon the ruin of the Parliament’s, we shall certainly fall into the same inconveniences and be obliged to act just as they do now.  We shall impose taxes, raise moneys, and differ from the Parliament only in this, that the hatred and envy they have contracted by various ways from one-third part of the people,—­I mean the wealthy citizens,—­in the space of six weeks will devolve upon us, with that of the other two-thirds of the inhabitants, and will complete our ruin in one week.  May not the Court to-morrow put an end to the civil war by the expulsion of Mazarin and by raising the siege of Paris?  The provinces are not yet sufficiently inflamed, and therefore we must double our application to make the most of Paris.  Besides the necessity of treating with Spain and managing the people, there is another expedient come into my head capable of rendering us as considerable in Parliament as our affairs require.