An unlucky expression, dropped on this occasion by the Princesse de
Guemenee, had an incredible influence upon the people. She called to
mind a ballad formerly made upon the regiment of Brulon, which was said
to consist of only two dragoons and four drummers, and, inasmuch as she
hated the Fronde, she told me very pleasantly that our party, being
reduced to fourteen, might be justly compared to that regiment of Brulon.
Noirmoutier and Laigues were offended at this expression to that degree
that they continually murmured because I neither settled affairs nor
pushed them to the last extremity. Upon which I observed that heads of
factions are no longer their masters when they are unable either to
prevent or allay the murmurs of the people.

The revenues of the Hotel de Ville, which are, as it were, the patrimony
of the bourgeois, and which, if well managed, might be of special service
to the King in securing to his interest an infinite number of those
people who are always the most formidable in revolutions--this sacred
fund, I say, suffered much by the licentiousness of the times, the
ignorance of Mazarin, and the prevarication of the officers of the Hotel
de Ville, who were his dependents, so that the poor annuitants met in
great numbers at the Hotel de Ville; but as such assemblies without the
Prince's authority are reckoned illegal, the Parliament passed a decree
to suppress them. They were privately countenanced by M. de Beaufort and
me, to whom they sent a solemn deputation, and they made choice of twelve
syndics to be a check upon the 'prevot des marchands'.

On the 11th of December a pistol, as had been concerted beforehand, was
fired into the coach of Joly, one of the syndics, which President
Charton, another of the syndics, thinking was aimed at himself, the
Marquis de la Boulaie ran as if possessed with a devil, while the