any uneasiness was on her track, when she opened the door of the garden,
leading into another street, and hurried toward the Rue Croix des Petits
Champs, where M. Colbert resided.

We have already said that evening, or rather night, had closed in; it
was a dark, thick night, besides; Paris had once more sunk into its
calm, quiescent state, enshrouding alike within its indulgent mantle the
high-born duchesse carrying out her political intrigue, and the simple
citizen's wife, who, having been detained late by a supper in the city,
was making her way slowly homeward, hanging on the arm of a lover, by
the shortest possible route. Madame de Chevreuse had been too well
accustomed to nocturnal political intrigues to be ignorant that a
minister never denies himself, even at his own private residence, to any
young and beautiful woman who may chance to object to the dust and
confusion of a public office, or to old women, as full of experience as
of years, who dislike the indiscreet echo of official residences. A
valet received the duchesse under the peristyle, and received her, it
must be admitted, with some indifference of manner; he intimated, after
having looked at her face, that it was hardly at such an hour that one
so advanced in years as herself could be permitted to disturb Monsieur
Colbert's important occupations.

But Madame de Chevreuse, without feeling or appearing to be annoyed,
wrote her name upon a leaf of her tablets--a name which had but too
frequently sounded so disagreeably in the ears of Louis XIII. and of the
great cardinal. She wrote her name in the large, ill-formed characters
of the higher classes of that period, folded the paper in a manner
peculiarly her own, handed it to the valet without uttering a word, but
with so haughty and imperious a gesture, that the fellow, well
accustomed to judge of people from their manners and appearance,
perceived at once the quality of the person before him, bowed his head,
and ran to M. Colbert's room. The minister could not control a sudden
exclamation as he opened the paper; and the valet, gathering from it the
interest with which his master regarded the mysterious visitor, returned
as fast as he could to beg the duchesse to follow him. She ascended to
the first floor of the beautiful new house very slowly, rested herself
on the landing-place, in order not to enter the apartment out of breath,
and appeared before M. Colbert, who, with his own hands, held both the
fol