"You know me, well enough to be aware that I am only nasty when I consider myself positively obliged to be," he said to them.

The patrons, whose cause these noblemen had lightly embraced, were not yet at the end of their humiliations.
[Illustrations: The Duchess of Maine----72] The Duke of Bourbon was not satisfied with their exclusion from the succession to the throne; he claimed the king's education, which belonged of right, he said, to the first prince of the blood, being a major.

In his hatred, then, towards the legitimatized, he accepted with alacrity the Duke of St.Simon's proposal to simply reduce them to their rank by seniority in the peerage, with the proviso of afterwards restoring the privileges of a prince of the blood in favor of the Count of Toulouse alone, as a reward for his services in the navy.

The blow thus dealt gratified all the passions of the House of Conde and the wrath of Law, as well as that of the keeper of the seals, D'Argenson, against the Parliament, which for three months past had refused to enregister all edicts.

On the 24th of August, 1718, at six in the morning, the Parliament received orders to repair to the Tuileries, where the king was to hold a bed of justice., The Duke of Maine, who was returning from a party, was notified, as colonel of the Swiss, to have his regiment under arms; at eight o'clock the council of regency was already assembled; the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse arrived in peer's robes.