The nation's depths, as represented by the middle classes, had found a new apostle in the person of a member of the Parliament, "President Barillon." Barillon had been a pillar of the Government, but his feelings had changed. Mme. de Motteville, who was in warm sympathy with the Regent, wrote bitterly of his new opinions. She said: That man has a little of the shade of feeling which colours the actions of some of the men of our century who always hate the happy and the powerful. Such men think that they prove their greatness of heart by loving only the unfortunate, and that idea incessantly involves them in parties, and makes them do things adverse to the Queen. The Court was as blind as the Queen's friend; it could not see that the day was coming when the determination to abolish abuses would sweep away the ancient social forms before their eyes. In the opinion of the Queen the criticisms and the ideas of the King's subjects constituted felony, and it was Barillon's fate to go down. Barillon had been the Queen's devoted friend and champion. After the King died he had worked hard to seat the royal widow on the throne. He believed--no one knew what excuse he had for believing such a thing--that the Queen shared his ideas of the rights of the poor and the humble, and that she believed as he believed: that kings owed certain duties to their subjects. Barillon was not forced to wait long for his enlightenment. Anne of Austria was a woman of short patience, and advice irritated her. As soon as the President's eyes were opened to the truth he rushed headlong into the arms of the Opposition. Anne of Austria scorned "his treachery to the Crown." His impassioned thoughts of divine justice were enigmatical to the sovereign understanding. She was enraged by the obstinacy of her old friend, and by her orders he was cast into the prison of Saint Piguerol, where he died, as the just Motteville said, "regretted by every one." Barillon was the precursor of the "Idealogues" of the eighteenth century and of the Socialists of our own day.