第66章 BOOK III(3)

M. de Beaufort and I agreed to go out and show ourselves to the people, whom we found in such a consternation that I believed the Court might then have attacked us with success. Madame de Montbazon advised us to take post-horses and ride off, saying that there was nothing more easy than to destroy us, because we had put ourselves into the hands of our sworn enemies. I said that we had better hazard our lives than our honour. To which she replied, "It is not that, but your nymphs, Ibelieve, which keep you here" (meaning Mesdames de Chevreuse and Guemenee). "I expect," she said, "to be befriended for my own sake, and don't I deserve it? I cannot conceive how you can be amused by a wicked old hag and a girl, if possible, still more foolish. We are continually disputing about that silly wretch " (pointing to M. de Beaufort, who was playing chess); "let us take him with us and go to Peronne."You are not to wonder that she talked thus contemptibly of M. de Beaufort, whom she always taxed with impotency, for it is certain that his love was purely Platonic, as he never asked any favour of her, and seemed very uneasy with her for eating flesh on Fridays. She was so sweet upon me, and withal such a charming beauty, that, being naturally indisposed to let such opportunities slip, I was melted into tenderness for her, notwithstanding my suspicions of her, considering the then situation of affairs, and would have had her go with me into the cabinet, but she was determined first to go to Peronne, which put an end to our amours.

Beaufort waited on the Prince and was well received, but I could not gain admittance.

On the 14th the Prince de Conde went to Parliament and demanded that a committee might be appointed to inquire into the attempt made on his life.

The Frondeurs were not asleep in the meantime, yet most of our friends were dispirited, and all very weak.

The cures of Paris were my most hearty friends; they laboured with incredible zeal among the people. And the cure of Saint Gervais sent me this message: "Do but rally again and get off the assassination, and in a week you will be stronger than your enemies.

I was informed that the Queen had written to my uncle, the Archbishop of Paris, to be sure to go to the Parliament on the 23d, the day that Beaufort, Broussel, and I were to be impeached, because I had no right to sit in the House if he were present. I begged of him not to go, but my uncle being a man of little sense, and that much out of order, and being, moreover, fearful and ridiculously jealous of me, had promised the Queen to go; and all that we could get out of him was that he would defend me in Parliament better than I could defend myself. It is to be observed that though he chattered to us like a magpie in private, yet in public he was as mute as a fish. A surgeon who was in the Archbishop's service, going to visit him, commended him for his courage in resisting the importunities of his nephew, who, said he, had a mind to bury him alive, and encouraged him to rise with all haste and go to the Parliament House;but he was no sooner out of his bed than the surgeon asked him in a fright how he felt. "Very well," said my Lord. "But that is impossible," said the surgeon; "you look like death," and feeling his pulse, he told him he was in a high fever; upon which my Lord Archbishop went to bed again, and all the kings and queens in Christendom could not get him out for a fortnight.

We went to the Parliament, and found there the Princes with nearly a thousand gentlemen and, I may say, the whole Court. I had few salutes in the Hall, because it was generally thought I was an undone man. When Ihad entered the Great Chamber I heard a hum like that at the end of a pleasing period in a sermon. When I had taken my place I said that, hearing we were taxed with a seditious conspiracy, we were come to offer our heads to the Parliament if guilty, and if innocent, to demand justice upon our accusers; and that though I knew not what right the Court had to call me to account, yet I would renounce all privileges to make my innocence apparent to a body for whom I always had the greatest attachment and veneration.

Then the informations were read against what they called "the public conspiracy from which it had pleased Almighty God to deliver the State and the royal family," after which I made a speech, in substance as follows:

"I do not believe, gentlemen, that in any of the past ages persons of our quality had ever received any personal summons grounded merely upon hearsay. Neither can I think that posterity will ever believe that this hearsay evidence was admitted from the mouths of the most infamous miscreants that ever got out of a gaol. Canto was condemned to the gallows at Pau, Pichon to the wheel at Mans, Sociande is a rogue upon record. Pray, gentlemen, judge of their evidence by their character and profession. But this is not all. They have the distinguishing character of being informers by authority. I am sorely grieved that the defence of our honour, which is enjoined us by the laws of God and man, should oblige me to expose to light, under the most innocent of Kings, such abominations as were detested in the most corrupt ages of antiquity and under the worst of tyrants. But I must tell you that Canto, Sociande, and Gorgibus are authorised to inform against us by a commission signed by that august name which should never be employed but for the preservation of the most sacred laws, and which Cardinal Mazarin, who knows no law but that of revenge, which he meditates against the defenders of the public liberty, has forced M. Tellier, Secretary of State, to countersign.