held.
“You surprise me!” exclaimed the monarch. “I am rejoiced to
hear you speak of Monsieur d’Emery as calculated for a post
which requires a man of probity. I was really afraid that
you were going to force that villain Particelli upon me.”
“Sire,” replied Richelieu, “rest assured that Particelli,
the man to whom your majesty refers, has been hanged.”
“Ah; so much the better!” exclaimed the king. “It is not for
nothing that I am styled Louis the Just.” and he signed
Emery’s appointment.
This was the same Emery who became eventually superintendent
of finance.
He was sent for by the ministers and he came before them
pale and trembling, declaring that his son had very nearly
been assassinated the day before, near the palace. The mob
had insulted him on account of the ostentatious luxury of
his wife, whose house was hung with red velvet edged with
gold fringe. This lady was the daughter of Nicholas de
Camus, who arrived in Paris with twenty francs in his
pocket, became secretary of state, and accumulated wealth
enough to divide nine millions of francs among his children
and to keep an income of forty thousand for himself.
The fact was that Emery’s son had run a great chance of
being suffocated, one of the rioters having proposed to
squeeze him until he gave up all the gold he had swallowed.
Nothing, therefore, was settled that day, as Emery’s head
was not steady enough for business after such an occurrence.
On the next day Mathieu Mole, the chief president, whose
courage at this crisis, says the Cardinal de Retz, was equal
to that of the Duc de Beaufort and the Prince de Conde — in
other words, of the two men who were considered the bravest
in France — had been attacked in his turn. The people
threatened to hold him responsible for the evils that hung
over them. But the chief president had replied with his
habitual coolness, without betraying either disturbance or
surprise, that should the agitators refuse obedience to the
king’s wishes he would have gallows erected in the public
squares and proceed at once to hang the most active among
them. To which the others had responded that they would be
glad to see the gallows erected; they would serve for the
hanging of those detestable judges who purchased favor at
court at the price of the people’s misery.
Nor was this all. On the eleventh the queen in going to mass
at Notre Dame, as she always did on Saturdays, was followed
by more than two hundred women demanding justice. These poor
creatures had no bad intentions. They wished only to be
allowed to fall on their knees before their sovereign, and
that they might move her to compassion; but they were
prevented by the royal guard and the queen proceeded on her
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
way, haughtily disdainful of their entreaties.
At length parliament was convoked; the authority of the king
was to be maintained.
One day — it was the morning of the day my story begins —
the king, Louis XIV., then ten years of age, went in state,
under pretext of returning thanks for his recovery from the
small-pox, to Notre Dame. He took the opportunity of calling
out his guard, the Swiss troops and the musketeers, and he
had planted them round the Palais Royal, on the quays, and
on the Pont Neuf. After mass the young monarch drove to the
Parliament House, where, upon the throne, he hastily
confirmed not only such edicts as he had already passed, but
issued new ones, each one, according to Cardinal de Retz,
more ruinous than the others — a proceeding which drew
forth a strong remonstrance from the chief president, Mole
— whilst President Blancmesnil and Councillor Broussel
raised their voices in indignation against fresh taxes.
The king returned amidst the silence of a vast multitude to
the Palais Royal. All minds were uneasy, most were
foreboding, many of the people used threatening language.
At first, indeed, they were doubtful whether the king’s
visit to the parliament had been in order to lighten or
increase their burdens; but scarcely was it known that the