was to effectually demolish Mazarin, and I acquiesced in the solid
satisfaction which I had in being considered in the world as the expeller
of Mazarin, whom everybody hated, and the deliverer of the Princes, who
were as much their darlings.

The continual chicanery of the Court provoked the Parliament of Paris to
write to all the Parliaments of France to issue decrees against Cardinal
Mazarin, which they did accordingly. The Parliament obliged the Court to
issue a declaration setting forth the innocence of the Princes, and
another for the exclusion of cardinals--French as well as
foreigners--from the King's Council, and the Parliament had no rest till
the Cardinal retired from Sedan to Breule, a house belonging to the
Elector of Cologne.

I had advice sent me from the Duchesse d'Orleans to be upon my guard, and
that she was on the point of dying with fear lest the Duke should be
forced by the daily menaces of the Court to abandon me. I thereupon
waited on the Duke, and told him that, having had the honour and
satisfaction of serving his Royal Highness in the two affairs which he
had most at heart,--namely, the expelling of Mazarin and the releasing of
the Princes his cousins,--I found myself now obliged to reassume the
functions of my profession; that the present opportunity seemed both to
favour and invite my retreat, and if I neglected it I should be the most
imprudent man living, because my presence for the future would not only
be useless but even prejudicial to his Royal Highness, whom I knew to be
daily importuned and irritated by the Court party merely upon my account;
and therefore I conjured him to make himself easy, and give me leave to
retire to my cloister. The Duke spared no kind words to retain me in his
service, promised never to forsake me, confessed that he had been urged
to it by the Queen, and that, though his reunion with her Majesty and the