Twenty Years After | Page 5

a council of state was assembled and the
superintendent of finance was summoned.
This man, named Emery, was the object of popular detestation, in the
first place because he was superintendent of finance, and every
superintendent of finance deserved to be hated; in the second place,
because he rather deserved the odium which he had incurred.
He was the son of a banker at Lyons named Particelli, who, after
becoming a bankrupt, chose to change his name to Emery; and Cardinal
Richelieu having discovered in him great financial aptitude, had
introduced him with a strong recommendation to Louis XIII. under his
assumed name, in order that he might be appointed to the post he
subsequently 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 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