Paris, as well as we; so the next day we made up our company with
them, and were a pretty troop of five gentlemen and four servants.

As we had really no design to stay long at Paris, so indeed, excepting
the city itself, there was not much to be seen there. Cardinal
Richelieu, who was not only a supreme minister in the Church, but
Prime Minister in the State, was now made also General of the King's
Forces, with a title never known in France before nor since, viz.,
Lieutenant-General "au place du Roi," in the king's stead, or, as some
have since translated it, representing the person of the king.

Under this character he pretended to execute all the royal powers in
the army without appeal to the king, or without waiting for orders;
and having parted from Paris the winter before had now actually begun
the war against the Duke of Savoy, in the process of which he restored
the Duke of Mantua, and having taken Pignerol from the duke, put it
into such a state of defence as the duke could never force it out of
his hands, and reduced the duke, rather by manage and conduct than
by force, to make peace without it; so as annexing it to the crown of
France it has ever since been a thorn in his foot that has always
made the peace of Savoy lame and precarious, and France has since made
Pignerol one of the strongest fortresses in the world.

As the cardinal, with all the military part of the court, was in the
field, so the king, to be near him, was gone with the queen and all
the court, just before I reached Paris, to reside at Lyons. All these
considered, there was nothing to do at Paris; the court looked like a
citizen's house when the family was all gone into the country, and
I thought the whole city looked very melancholy, compared to all the
fine things I had heard of it.