onds.'"

"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 Orleans?
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 Medicis, 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?"

"Nothi