de Treville held, you ask of me."

"The place, madame, is vacant, and although 'tis a year since Monsieur
de Treville has left it, it has not been filled."

"But it is one of the principal military appointments in the king's
household."

"Monsieur de Treville was but a younger son of a simple Gascon family,
like me, madame; he occupied that post for twenty years."

"You have an answer ready for everything," replied the queen, and she
took from her bureau a document, which she filled up and signed.

"Undoubtedly, madame," said D'Artagnan, taking the document and bowing,
"this is a noble reward; but everything in the world is unstable, and
the man who happened to fall into disgrace with your majesty might lose
this office to-morrow."

"What more do you want?" asked the queen, coloring, as she found that
she had to deal with a mind as subtle as her own.

"A hundred thousand francs for this poor captain of musketeers, to
be paid whenever his services shall no longer be acceptable to your
majesty."

Anne hesitated.

"To think of the Parisians," soliloquized D'Artagnan, "offering only the
other day, by an edict of the parliament, six hundred thousand francs
to any man soever who would deliver up the cardinal to them, dead or
alive--if alive, in order to hang him; if dead, to deny him the rites of
Christian burial!"

"Come," said Anne, "'tis reasonable, since you only ask from a queen the
sixth of what the parliament has proposed;" and she signed an order for
a hundred thousand francs.

"Now, then," she said, "what next?"

"Madame, my friend Du Vallon is rich and has therefore nothing in
the way of fortune to desire; but I think I remember that there was
a question between him and Monsieur Mazarin as to making his estate a
barony. Nay, it must have been a promise."

"A country clown," said Anne of Austria, "people will laugh."

"Let them," answered D'Artagnan. "But I am sure of one thing--that those
who laugh at him in his presence will never laugh a second time."

"Here goes the barony." said the queen; she signed a patent.

"Now there remains the chevalier, or the Abbe d'Herblay, as your majesty
pleases."

"Does he wish to be a bishop?"

"No, madame, something easier to grant."

"What?"

"It is that the king should deign to stand godfather to the son of
Madame de Longueville."

The queen smiled.

"Monsieur de Longueville is of royal blood, madame," said D'Artagnan.

"Yes," said the queen; "but