So much glory and so many military or diplomatic successes cost dear; France was crushed by imposts, and the finances were discovered to be in utter disorder; the superintendent, D’Emery, an able and experienced man, was so justly discredited that his measures were, as a foregone conclusion, unpopular; an edict laying octroi or tariff on the entry of provisions into the city of Paris irritated the burgesses, and Parliament refused to enregister it. For some time past the Parliament, which had been kept down by the iron hand of Richelieu, had perceived that it had to do with nothing more than an able man, and not a master; it began to hold up its head again; a union was proposed between the four sovereign courts of Paris, to wit, the Parliament, the grand council, the chamber of exchequer, and the court of aids or indirect taxes; the queen quashed the deed of union; the magistrates set her at nought; the queen yielded, authorizing the delegates to deliberate in the chamber of St. Louis at the Palace of Justice; the pretensions of the Parliament were exorbitant, and aimed at nothing short of resuming, in the affairs of the state, the position from which Richelieu had deposed it; the concessions which Cardinal Mazarin with difficulty wrung from the queen augmented the Parliament’s demands. Anne of Austria was beginning to lose patience, when the news of the victory of Lens restored courage to the court. “Parliament will be very sorry,” said the little king, on hearing of the Prince of Conde’s success. The grave assemblage, on the 26th of August, was issuing from Notre Dame, where a Te Deum had just been sung, when Councillor Broussel and President Blancmesnil were arrested in their houses, and taken one to St. Germain and the other to Vincennes. This was a familiar proceeding on the part of royal authority in its disagreements with the Parliament. Anne of Austria herself had practised it four years before. [Illustration: Arrest of Broussel----352]