will open the conferences. They can take place at Rueil. The
cardinal has said several things which have agitated me, therefore I
will not speak more fully now. As to his going or staying, I feel too
much gratitude to the cardinal not to leave him free in all his actions;
he shall do what he wishes to do."

A transient pallor overspread the speaking countenance of the prime
minister; he looked at the queen with anxiety. Her face was so
passionless, that he, as every one else present, was incapable of
reading her thoughts.

"But," added the queen, "in awaiting the cardinal's decision let there
be, if you please, a reference to the king only."

The deputies bowed and left the room.

"What!" exclaimed the queen, when the last of them had quitted the
apartment, "you would yield to these limbs of the law--these advocates?"

"To promote your majesty's welfare, madame," replied Mazarin, fixing his
penetrating eyes on the queen, "there is no sacrifice that I would not
make."

Anne dropped her head and fell into one of those reveries so habitual
with her. A recollection of Athos came into her mind. His fearless
deportment, his words, so firm, yet dignified, the shades which by one
word he had evoked, recalled to her the past in all its intoxication of
poetry and romance, youth, beauty, the eclat of love at twenty years
of age, the bloody death of Buckingham, the only man whom she had ever
really loved, and the heroism of those obscure champions who had saved
her from the double hatred of Richelieu and the king.

Mazarin looked at her, and whilst she deemed herself alone and freed
from the world of enemies who sought to spy into her secret thoughts, he
read her thoughts in her countenance, as one sees in a transparent lake
clouds pass--reflections, like thoughts, of the heavens.

"Must we, then," asked Anne of Austria, "yield to the storm, buy peace,
and patiently and piously await better times?"

Mazarin smiled sarcastically at this speech, which showed that she had
taken the minister's proposal seriously.

Anne's head was bent down--she had not seen the Italian's smile; but
finding that her question elicited no reply she looked up.

"Well, you do not answer, cardinal, what do you think about it?"

"I am thinking, madame, of the allusion made by that insolent gentleman,
whom you have caused to be arrested, to the Duke of Buckingham--to him
whom you allowed to be assassinated--to the Duchess de Chevreuse, whom
you