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 a