In the month of August 1603 the Comte de Soissons, whose lavish expenditure made it important for him to increase his income by some new concession on the part of the monarch, held an earnest consultation with Madame de Verneuil, with whom he was on the closest terms of intimacy, as to the most feasible method of effecting his object, and it was at length determined that the Prince should solicit the privilege of exacting a duty of fifteen sous upon every bale of cloth, either imported or exported throughout the kingdom; while the Marquise pledged herself to exert her influence to induce the King to consent to the arrangement, for which service she was to receive one-fifth of the proceeds resulting from the tax. Extraordinary as such a demand must appear in the present day, it was, according to Sully, by no means an unusual one at that period; when, by his rigorous retrenchments, he had greatly reduced the revenues of the Court nobles, and put it out of the power of the monarch to bestow upon them, as he had formerly done, the most lavish sums from his own privy purse; thus inducing them to adopt every possible expedient in order to increase their diminished incomes. Sympathizing with the annoyance of his impoverished courtiers, and anxious to silence their murmurs, the good-natured and reckless sovereign seldom met their requests with a denial, and from this abuse a number of petty taxes, each perhaps insignificant in itself, but in the aggregate amounting to a heavy infliction upon the people, were levied on all sides, and under all pretences; and the evil at length became so serious that the prudent minister found it necessary to expostulate respectfully with his royal master upon the danger of such a system, and to entreat of him to discountenance any further imposts which had no tendency to increase the revenues of the state, but merely served to encourage the prodigality of the nobles.