"Madame, credit the coadjutor, who is one of the most able politicians we have; the first available cardinal's hat seems to belong already to his noble brow."
"Ah! how much you have need of me, cunning rogue!" thought Gondy.
("And what will he promise us?" said D'Artagnan. "Peste, if he is giving away hats like that, Porthos, let us look out and both demand a regiment to-morrow. Corbleu! let the civil war last but one year and I will have a constable's sword gilt for me."
"And for me?" put in Porthos.
"For you? I will give you the baton of the Marechal de la Meilleraie, who does not seem to be much in favor just now.")
"And so, sir," said the queen, "you are seriously afraid of a public tumult."
"Seriously," said Gondy, astonished at not having further advanced; "I fear that when the torrent has broken its embankment it will cause fearful destruction."
"And I," said the queen, "think that in such a case other embankments should be raised to oppose it. Go; I will reflect."
Gondy looked at Mazarin, astonished, and Mazarin approached the queen to speak to her, but at this moment a frightful tumult arose from the square of the Palais Royal.
Gondy smiled, the queen's color rose and Mazarin grew even paler.
"What is that again?" he asked.
At this moment Comminges rushed into the room.
"Pardon, your majesty," he cried, "but the people have dashed the sentinels against the gates and they are now forcing the doors; what are your commands?"
"Listen, madame," said Gondy.
The moaning of waves, the noise of thunder, the roaring of a volcano, cannot be compared with the tempest of cries heard at that moment.
"What are my commands?" said the queen.
"Yes, for time presses."
"How many men have you about the Palais Royal?"
"Six hundred."
"Place a hundred around the king and with the remainder sweep away this mob for me."
"Madame," cried Mazarin, "what are you about?"
"Go!" said the queen.
Comminges went out with a soldier's passive obedience.
At this moment a monstrous battering was heard. One of the gates began to yield.
"Oh! madame," cried Mazarin, "you have ruined us all -- the king, yourself and me."
At this cry from the soul of the frightened cardinal, Anne became alarmed in her turn and would have recalled Comminges.
"It is too late," said Mazarin, tearing his hair, "too late!"
The gale had given way. Hoarse shouts were heard from the excited mob. D'Artagnan put his hand to his sword, motioning to Porthos to follow his example.
"Save the queen!" cried Mazarin to the coadjutor.
Gondy sprang to the window and threw it open; he recognized Louvieres at the head of a troop of about three or four thousand men.
"Not a step further," he shouted, "the queen is signing!"
"What are you saying?" asked the queen.
"The truth, madame," said Mazarin, placing a pen and a paper before her, "you must;" then he added: "Sign, Anne, I implore you -- I command you."
The queen fell into a chair, took the pen and signed.
The people, kept back by Louvieres, had not made another step forward; but the awful murmuring, which indicates an angry people, continued.
The queen had written, "The keeper of the prison at Saint Germain will set Councillor Broussel at liberty;" and she had signed it.
The coadjutor, whose eyes devoured her slightest movements, seized the paper immediately the signature had been affixed to it, returned to the window and waved it in his hand.
"This is the order," he said.
All Paris seemed to shout with joy, and then the air resounded with the cries of "Long live Broussel!" "Long live the coadjutor!"
"Long live the queen!" cried De Gondy; but the cries which replied to his were poor and few, and perhaps he had but uttered it to make Anne of Austria sensible of her weakness.
"And now that you have obtained what you want, go," said she, "Monsieur de Gondy."
"Whenever her majesty has need of me," replied the coadjutor, bowing, "her majesty knows I am at her command."
"Ah, cursed priest!" cried Anne, when he had retired, stretching out her arm to the scarcely closed door, "one day I will make you drink the dregs of the atrocious gall you have poured out on me to-day."
Mazarin wished to approach her. "Leave me!" she exclaimed;
"you are not a man!" and she went out of the room.
"It is you who are not a woman," muttered Mazarin.
Then, after a moment of reverie, he remembered where he had left D'Artagnan and Porthos and that they must have overheard everything. He knit his brows and went direct to the tapestry, which he pushed aside. The closet was empty.
At the queen's last word, D'Artagnan had dragged Porthos into the gallery. Thither Mazarin went in his turn and found the two friends walking up and down.
"Why did you leave the closet, Monsieur d'Artagnan?" asked the cardinal.
"Because," replied D'Artagnan, "the queen desired every one to leave and I thought that this command was intended for us as well as for the rest."
"And you have been here since ---- "
"About a quarter of an hour," said D'Artagnan, motioning to Porthos not to contradict him.
Mazarin saw the sign and remained convinced that D'Artagnan had seen and heard everything; but he was pleased with his falsehood.
"Decidedly, Monsieur d'Artagnan, you are the man I have been seeking. You may reckon upon me and so may your friend."
Then bowing to the two musketeers with his most gracious smile, he re-entered his closet more calmly, for on the departure of De Gondy the uproar had ceased as though by enchantment.