Louise appeared touched by these representations, and promised to represent their full weight to the king, "if the Parliament will consent to point out to me of itself any other means of readily raising the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand livres, which the king absolutely cannot do without." The struggle was prolonged until the Parliament declared "that it could not, without offending God and betraying its own conscience, proceed to the registration; but that if it were the king's pleasure to be obeyed at any price, he had only to depute his chancellor or some other great personage, in whose presence and on whose requirement the registration should take place." Chancellor Duprat did not care to undertake this commission in person.

Count de St.Pol, governor of Paris, was charged with it, and the court caused to be written at the bottom of the letters of command, "Read and published in presence of Count de St.Pol, specially deputed for this purpose, who ordered viva voce, in the king's name, that they be executed." Thus began to be implanted in that which should be the most respected and the most independent amongst the functions of government, namely, the administration of justice, not only the practice, but the fundamental maxim, of absolute government.

"I am going to the court, and I will speak the truth; after which the king will have to be obeyed," was said in the middle of the seventeenth century by the premier president Mold to Cardinal de Retz.

Chancellor Duprat, if we are not mistaken, was, in the sixteenth century, the first chief of the French magistracy to make use of language despotic not only in fact, but also in principle.

President Mole was but the head of a body invested, so far as the king was concerned, with the right of remonstrance and resistance; when once that right was exercised, he might, without servility, give himself up to resignation.