Like a wave of noise, colour and light, with its tramping feet and flickering candles, under the heavy clangour of the great bells, the procession rolls into Notre Dame, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, Richelieu’s hated Metropolitan, thunders out his sermon to the Estates of France: “Fear God. Honour the King.” The three Estates held their sittings in three of the vast rooms of the Convent of the Augustins, but the opening ceremony took place in the hall of the old Hôtel de Bourbon, east of the Louvre. There the little King, a dark, solemn boy, whose majority, on entering his fourteenth year, had lately been celebrated, sat enthroned “on violet velvet, powdered with golden lilies.” On his right were the two Queens, Marie and Marguerite, and the young Princess Élisabeth, the future Queen of Spain. His brother Gaston, a lively, pretty child of five, his little sisters Christine and Henriette Marie, sat on his left; a gorgeous ring of princes, courtiers and great ladies surrounded them. In theory, the body of the hall was kept for deputies; in fact, it was inconveniently crowded by Parisians, chiefly hangers-on of the Court. “Tout était plein de dames et de damoiselles, de gentilshommes et autre peuple,” says Florimond Rapine, the chronicler. The deputies were indignant, and it was long before all could find places. Then the wild, ill-assorted assembly listened kindly to a few stammering words from Louis XIII., and impatiently to a long harangue from Chancellor Sillery, which committed the Government to nothing. The ceremonies of opening and closing were very much the same. Three months of arguing and quarrelling, during which Paris was frequently in an uproar, the Prince de Condé claiming homage that nobody would pay, the Duc d’Épernon insulting the Parliament, gentlemen fighting in the streets, the Estates themselves divided into violent parties for and against the Pope and Spain, the Third Estate demanding the abolition of pensions and privileges, the nobles and clergy angrily defending their rights, brought the assembly once more together at the Hôtel de Bourbon, in the presence of the Court. Manners had not improved. Two thousand of the baser sort of courtiers, men and women, with numbers of people of all kinds, had crowded into the best places. Rapine saw “cardinals, bishops, priors, abbots, the nobility and all the Third Estate, crowded and pushed without order, respect, or consideration, among the pikemen and halberdiers.” [Illustration: THE MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII (LOUIS XIII AND MARIE DE MÉDICIS) FROM THE PICTURE BY RUBENS IN THE LOUVRE] In the midst of this babel, the spokesmen of the three Orders had to present to the King their _cahiers_, containing the result of their stormy deliberations. First it was the turn of the clergy; and their orator, chosen, like his fellows, by the influence of the Queen-Regent, was the Bishop of Luçon.