'The manner in which you, the queen and the duke of Acquitaine, are pillaged, is easily shown; for when you have need of a speedy sum of money for the war, or for any other urgent necessity, application must be made to certain money-lenders, who, for usury, make a traffic of money, and supply your wants on having your plate and jewels in pawn, and at an exorbitant loss in the interest paid for these loans, insomuch that what may be worth ten thousand francs costs you fifteen or sixteen; and thus your losses are annually very great from these usurious practices and pretended exchanges. You may readily suppose that your officers must be accomplices in this traffic, and that this alone will occasion such an empty treasury. Your inferior servants are much distressed and ill treated; and in this manner are not only your own affairs but those of the princes of your blood managed, without any exception. 'Item, it is proper that you should be made acquainted with the tricks and deceit of those officers called Generals, in the receipt of your finances. When any receiver shall have lent you a sum amounting to five or six thousand crowns over and above his receipt, he is dismissed from his office, to prevent him from reimbursing himself, and another put in his place, who will receive the whole of the taxes in that department. When, therefore, there shall be little or nothing to receive, he that was dismissed will be replaced in his office, provided he has made sufficient presents to his superior officers. By this means, the aforesaid receiver can neither be paid nor pay what he owes; and thus they ride one on another, to the ruin of your finances,--and you drink your wine sour. 'Item, when there is an ambassador to be sent, or even a simple canon to be dispatched to a foreign country, money for their expenses must be borrowed from usurers; and it frequently happens that the aforesaid ambassador cannot depart for want of money, which renders the embassy useless, and the kingdom suffers greatly from it. 'Item, it is also necessary that you should know what is become of all the money that for these last two years has been raised, as well from the domains of the crown as from the very numerous and heavy taxes and impositions of all sorts, of which the provost of Paris has, as is notorious, taken on himself the management, and styled himself Director and General Superintendant of the Finances. 'Item, it should likewise be remembered, that other great officers, as well as the provost, have held many offices of importance, which they have sold, and pocketed the amount, to your great disadvantage and contrary to your royal edicts, and also to the prejudice of the kingdom,--for, by this system, ignorant and improper persons are put into the said offices.