In her quality as queen mother, she kept the King well in hand. She would not permit anyone but herself to sleep in his bed-chamber; she never left him alone. She governed as if she were king. She appointed to offices and to benefices; she granted pardon; she kept the seal; she had the last word to say in council; she opened the letters of the ambassadors and other ministers. Those who used to think she was a timid woman discovered that her courage was great; and that, like Leo X and all his house, she possessed the art of dissimulation.[288] The Huguenots had hoped for much politically from the sudden revolution, and looked forward to organizing the States-General, while the Catholics hoped that the precautions taken during the elections had insured the election of men opposed to any novelty in the matter of religion.[289] The first session took place on December 13.[290] L’Hôpital, the chancellor, made an eloquent and earnest plea in favor of harmony among the members, endeavoring to draw them away from religious animosities by pointing out the great necessity of administrative and political reform, urging that the root of the present evils was to be found in the miscarriage of justice, the burdensome taxes, the corruption of office, etc.[291] He ascribed the religious inquietude to the degeneracy of the church and advocated thorough reform of it, saying that the clergy gave occasion for the introducing of a new religion, though he avoided entering into the matter of merit of its doctrines.[292] He pointed out the needs of France and the necessity for civil and religious concord, and, in the peroration pleaded for earnest, patriotic support of the boy-King, “for there never was a father, no matter of what estate or condition, who ever left a little orphan more involved, more in debt, more hampered than our young prince is by the death of the kings, his father and his brother. All the cost and expenses of twelve or thirteen years of long and continuous war have fallen upon him; three grand marriages are to be paid for, and other things too long to tell of now; the domain, the aids, the salt storehouses, and part of the _taille_ have been alienated.”[293]