ng away the paper. "No, no, Guenaud,
I yield! I yield!" And a profound silence, during which the cardinal
resumed his senses and recovered his strength, succeeded to the
agitation of this scene. "There is another thing," murmured Mazarin;
"there are empirics and charlatans. In my country, those whom physicians
abandon run the chance of a quack, who kills them ten times but saves
them a hundred times."

"Has not your eminence observed, that during the last month I have
changed my remedies ten times?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Well, I have spent fifty thousand crowns in purchasing the secrets of
all these fellows: the list is exhausted, and so is my purse. You are
not cured: and, but for my art, you would be dead."

"That ends it!" murmured the cardinal; "that ends it." And he threw a
melancholy look upon the riches which surrounded him. "And must I quit
all that?" sighed he. "I am dying, Guenaud! I am dying!"

"Oh! not yet, my lord," said the physician.

Mazarin seized his hand. "In what time?" asked he, fixing his two large
eyes upon the impassible countenance of the physician.

"My lord, we never tell that."

"To ordinary men, perhaps not;--but to me--to me, whose every minute is
worth a treasure. Tell me, Guenaud, tell me!"

"No, no, my lord."

"I insist upon it, I tell you. Oh! give me a month, and for every one of
those thirty days I will pay you a hundred thousand crowns."

"My lord," replied Guenaud, in a firm voice, "it is God who can give you
days of grace, and not I. God only allows you a fortnight."

The cardinal breathed a painful sigh, and sank back down upon his
pillow, murmuring, "Thank you, Guenaud, thank you!"

The physician was about to depart; the dying man, raising himself up:
"Silence!" said he, with flaming eyes, "silence!"

"My lord, I have known this secret two months; you see that I have kept
it faithfully."

"Go, Guenaud; I will take care of your fortunes; go, and tell Brienne to
send me a clerk called M. Colbert. Go!"

Chapter XLIV. Colbert.

Colbert was not far off. During the whole evening he had remained in one
of the corridors, chatting with Bernouin and Brienne, and commenting,
with the ordinary skill of people of court, upon the news which
developed like air-bubbles upon the water, on the surface of each
event. It is doubtless time to trace, in a few words, one of the most
interesting portraits of the age, and to trace it with as much truth,
perhaps, as contemporary painte