Twenty years after
Curtius, enlivened as they were by engravings of Alexander’s feats of
arms, frowned and looked at his mother.
“Why,” he said, “does he enter without first asking for an audience?”
Anne colored slightly.
“The prime minister,” she said, “is obliged in these unsettled days to
inform the queen of all that is happening from time to time, without
exciting the curiosity or remarks of the court.”
“But Richelieu never came in this manner,” said the pertinacious boy.
“How can you remember what Monsieur de Richelieu did? You were too
young to know about such things.”
“I do not remember what he did, but I have inquired and I have been
told all about it.”
“And who told you about it?” asked Anne of Austria, with a movement of
impatience.
“I know that I ought never to name the persons who answer my
questions,” answered the child, “for if I do I shall learn nothing
further.”
At this very moment Mazarin entered. The king rose immediately, took
his book, closed it and went to lay it down on the table, near which he
continued standing, in order that Mazarin might be obliged to stand
also.
Mazarin contemplated these proceedings with a thoughtful glance. They
explained what had occurred that evening.
He bowed respectfully to the king, who gave him a somewhat cavalier
reception, but a look from his mother reproved him for the hatred
which, from his infancy, Louis XIV. had entertained toward Mazarin, and
he endeavored to receive the minister’s homage with civility.
Anne of Austria sought to read in Mazarin’s face the occasion of this
unexpected visit, since the cardinal usually came to her apartment only
after every one had retired.
The minister made a slight sign with his head, whereupon the queen said
to Madame Beauvais:
“It is time for the king to go to bed; call Laporte.”
The queen had several times already told her son that he ought to go to
bed, and several times Louis had coaxingly insisted on staying where he
was; but now he made no reply, but turned pale and bit his lips with
anger.
In a few minutes Laporte came into the room. The child went directly to
him without kissing his mother.
“Well, Louis,” said Anne, “why do you not kiss me?”
“I thought you were angry with me, madame; you sent me away.”
“I do not send you away, but you have had the small-pox and I am afraid
that sitting up late may tire you.”
“You had no fears of my being tired when you ordered me to go to the
palace to-day to pass the odious decrees which have raised the people
to rebellion.”
“Sire!” interposed Laporte, in order to turn the subject, “to whom does
your majesty wish me to give the candle?”
“To any one, Laporte,” the child said; and then added in a loud voice,
“to any one except Mancini.”
Now Mancini was a nephew of Mazarin’s and was as much hated by Louis as
the cardinal himself, although placed near his person by the minister.
And the king went out of the room without either embracing his mother
or even bowing to the cardinal.
“Good,” said Mazarin, “I am glad to see that his majesty has been
brought up with a hatred of dissimulation.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the queen, almost timidly.
“Why, it seems to me that the way in which he left us needs no
explanation. Besides, his majesty takes no pains to conceal how little
affection he has for me. That, however, does not hinder me from being
entirely devoted to his service, as I am to that of your majesty.”
“I ask your pardon for him, cardinal,” said the queen; “he is a child,
not yet able to understand his obligations to you.”
The cardinal smiled.
“But,” continued the queen, “you have doubtless come for some important
purpose. What is it, then?”
Mazarin sank into a chair with the deepest melancholy painted on his
countenance.
“It is likely,” he replied, “that we shall soon be obliged to separate,
unless you love me well enough to follow me to Italy.”
“Why,” cried the queen; “how is that?”
“Because, as they say in the opera of ‘Thisbe,’ ‘The whole world
conspires to break our bonds.’”
“You jest, sir!” answered the queen, endeavoring to assume something of
her former dignity.
“Alas! I do not, madame,” rejoined Mazarin. “Mark well what I say. The
whole world conspires to break our bonds. Now as you are one of the
whole world, I mean to say that you also are deserting me.”
“Cardinal!”
“Heavens! did I not see you the other day smile on the Duke of Orléans?
or rather at what he said?”
“And what was he saying?”
“He said this, madame: ‘Mazarin is a stumbling-block. Send him away and
all will then be well.’”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“Oh, madame! you are the queen!”
“Queen, forsooth! when I am at the mercy of every scribbler in the
Palais Royal who covers waste paper with nonsense, or of every country
squire in the kingdom.”
“Nevertheless, you have still the power of banishing from your presence
those whom you do not like!”
“That is to say, whom _you_ do not like,” returned the queen.
“I! persons whom _I_ do not like!”
“Yes, indeed. Who sent away Madame de Chevreuse after she had been
persecuted twelve years under the last reign?”
“A woman of intrigue, who wanted to keep up against me the spirit of
cabal she had raised against M. de Richelieu.”
“Who dismissed Madame de Hautefort, that friend so loyal that she
refused the favor of the king that she might remain in mine?”
“A prude, who told you every night, as she undressed you, that it was a
sin to love a priest, just as if one were a priest because one happens
to be a cardinal.”
“Who ordered Monsieur de Beaufort to be arrested?”
“An incendiary the burden of whose song was his intention to
assassinate me.”
“You see, cardinal,” replied the queen, “that your enemies are mine.”
“That is not enough madame, it is necessary that your friends should be
also mine.”
“My friends, monsieur?” The queen shook her head. “Alas, I have them no
longer!”
“How is it that you have no friends in your prosperity when you had
many in adversity?”
“It is because in my prosperity I forgot those old friends, monsieur;
because I have acted like Queen Marie de Médicis, who, returning from
her first exile, treated with contempt all those who had suffered for
her and, being proscribed a second time, died at Cologne abandoned by
every one, even by her own son.”
“Well, let us see,” said Mazarin; “isn’t there still time to repair the
evil? Search among your friends, your oldest friends.”
“What do you mean, monsieur?”
“Nothing else than I say—search.”
“Alas, I look around me in vain! I have no influence with any one.
Monsieur is, as usual, led by his favorite; yesterday it was Choisy,
to-day it is La Rivière, to-morrow it will be some one else. Monsieur
le Prince is led by the coadjutor, who is led by Madame de Guéménée.”
“Therefore, madame, I ask you to look, not among your friends of
to-day, but among those of other times.”
“Among my friends of other times?” said the queen.
“Yes, among your friends of other times; among those who aided you to
contend against the Duc de Richelieu and even to conquer him.”
“What is he aiming at?” murmured the queen, looking uneasily at the
cardinal.
“Yes,” continued his eminence; “under certain circumstances, with that
strong and shrewd mind your majesty possesses, aided by your friends,
you were able to repel the attacks of that adversary.”
“I!” said the queen. “I suffered, that is all.”
“Yes,” said Mazarin, “as women suffer in avenging themselves. Come, let
us come to the point. Do you know Monsieur de Rochefort?”
“One of my bitterest enemies—the faithful friend of Cardinal
Richelieu.”
“I know that, and we sent him to the Bastile,” said Mazarin.
“Is he at liberty?” asked the queen.
“No; still there, but I only speak of him in order that I may introduce
the name of another man. Do you know Monsieur d’Artagnan?” he added,
looking steadfastly at the queen.
Anne of Austria received the blow with a beating heart.
“Has the Gascon been indiscreet?” she murmured to herself, then said
aloud:
“D’Artagnan! stop an instant, the name seems certainly familiar.
D’Artagnan! there was a musketeer who was in love with one of my women.
Poor young creature! she was poisoned on my account.”
“That’s all you know of him?” asked Mazarin.
The queen looked at him, surprised.
“You seem, sir,” she remarked, “to be making me undergo a course of
cross-examination.”
“Which you answer according to your fancy,” replied Mazarin.
“Tell me your wishes and I will comply with them.”
The queen spoke with some impatience.
“Well, madame,” said Mazarin, bowing, “I desire that you give me a
share in your friends, as I have shared with you the little industry
and talent that Heaven has given me. The circumstances are grave and it
will be necessary to act promptly.”
“Still!” said the queen. “I thought that we were finally quit of
Monsieur de Beaufort.”
“Yes, you saw only the torrent that threatened to overturn everything
and you gave no attention to the still water. There is, however, a
proverb current in France relating to water which is quiet.”
“Continue,” said the queen.
“Well, then, madame, not a day passes in which I do not suffer affronts
from your princes and your lordly servants, all of them automata who do
not perceive that I wind up the spring that makes them move, nor do
they see that beneath my quiet demeanor lies the still scorn of an
injured, irritated man, who has sworn to himself to master them one of
these days. We have arrested Monsieur de Beaufort, but he is the least
dangerous among them. There is the Prince de Condé——”
“The hero of Rocroy. Do you think of _him?_”
“Yes, madame, often and often, but _pazienza_, as we say in Italy;
next, after Monsieur de Condé, comes the Duke of Orléans.”
“What are you saying? The first prince of the blood, the king’s uncle!”
“No! not the first prince of the blood, not the king’s uncle, but the
base conspirator, the soul of every cabal, who pretends to lead the
brave people who are weak enough to believe in the honor of a prince of
the blood—not the prince nearest to the throne, not the king’s uncle, I
repeat, but the murderer of Chalais, of Montmorency and of Cinq-Mars,
who is playing now the same game he played long ago and who thinks that
he will win the game because he has a new adversary—instead of a man
who threatened, a man who smiles. But he is mistaken; I shall not leave
so near the queen that source of discord with which the deceased
cardinal so often caused the anger of the king to rage above the
boiling point.”
Anne blushed and buried her face in her hands.
“What am I to do?” she said, bowed down beneath the voice of her
tyrant.
“Endeavor to remember the names of those faithful servants who crossed
the Channel, in spite of Monsieur de Richelieu, tracking the roads
along which they passed by their blood, to bring back to your majesty
certain jewels given by you to Buckingham.”
Anne arose, full of majesty, and as if touched by a spring, and looking
at the cardinal with the haughty dignity which in the days of her youth
had made her so powerful: “You are insulting me!” she said.
“I wish,” continued Mazarin, finishing, as it were, the speech this
sudden movement of the queen had cut; “I wish, in fact, that you should
now do for your husband what you formerly did for your lover.”
“Again that accusation!” cried the queen. “I thought that calumny was
stifled or extinct; you have spared me till now, but since you speak of
it, once for all, I tell you——”
“Madame, I do not ask you to tell me,” said Mazarin, astounded by this
returning courage.
“I will tell you all,” replied Anne. “Listen: there were in truth, at
that epoch, four devoted hearts, four loyal spirits, four faithful