PLANS FOR THE FUTURE. 339

As the King became weaker in health, and evidently drew
near his end, I had continued interviews with Madame d'Or-
Idans upon the subject of the regency, the plan of government
to be adopted, and the policy he should follow. Hundreds of
times before we had reasoned together upon the faults of the
Government, and the misfortunes that resulted from them.
What we had to do was to avoid those faults, educate the
youDg King in good and national maxims, so that when he
succeeded to power he might continue what the Regency had
not had time to finish. This, at least, was my idea, and I
laboured hard to make it the idea of M. le Due d'Orleans. As
the health of the King diminished I entered more into details;
as I will explain.

What I considered the most important thing to be done, was
to overthrow entirely the system of government in which
Cardinal Mazarin had imprisoned the King and the realm. A
foreigner, risen from the dregs of the people, who thinks of
nothing but his own power and his own greatness, cares
nothing for the state, except in its relation to himself. He de-
spises its laws, its genius, its advantages: he is ignorant of its
rules and its forms; he thinks only of subjugating all, of con-
founding all, of bringing all down to one level. Richelieu and
his successor, Mazarin, succeeded so well in this policy that the
nobility, by degrees, became annihilated, as we now see them.
The pen and the robe people, on the other hand, were exalted;
so that now things have reached such a pretty pass that
the greatest lord is without power, and in a thousand dif-
ferent manners is dependent upon the meanest plebeian. It
is in this manner that things hasten from one extreme to the
other.

My design was to commence by introducing the nobility
into the ministry, with the dignity and authority due to them,
and by degrees to dismiss the pen and robe people from all
employ not purely judicial. In this manner the administra-
tion of public affairs would be entirely in the hands of the
aristocracy. I proposed to abolish the two offices of secretary
of state for the war department, and for foreign affairs, and to