stopped,
a look from Colbert telling him he was on the wrong track.

"I know," said Anne of Austria, taking the cardinal's hand, "I know that
you have generously made, not a little donation, as you modestly call
it, but a magnificent gift. I know how painful it would be to you if the
king--"

Mazarin listened, dying as he was, as ten living men could not have
listened.

"If the king--" replied he.

"If the king," continued Anne of Austria, "should not freely accept what
you offer so nobly."

Mazarin allowed himself to sink back upon his pillow like Pantaloon;
that is to say, with all the despair of a man who bows before the
tempest; but he still preserved sufficient strength and presence of
mind to cast upon Colbert one of those looks which are well worth ten
sonnets, which is to say, ten long poems.

"Should you not," added the queen, "have considered the refusal of
the king as a sort of insult?" Mazarin rolled his head about upon his
pillow, without articulating a syllable. The queen was deceived, or
feigned to be deceived, by this demonstration.

"Therefore," resumed she, "I have circumvented him with good counsels;
and as certain minds, jealous, no doubt, of the glory you are about to
acquire by this generosity, have endeavored to prove to the king that he
ought not to accept this donation, I have struggled in your favor, and
so well I have struggled, that you will not have, I hope, that distress
to undergo."

"Ah!" murmured Mazarin, with languishing eyes, "ah! that is a service I
shall never forget for a single minute of the few hours I still have to
live."

"I must admit," continued the queen, "that it was not without trouble I
rendered it to your eminence."

"Ah, _peste!_ I believe that. Oh! oh!"

"Good God! what is the matter?"

"I am burning!"

"Do you suffer much?"

"As much as one of the damned."

Colbert would have liked to sink through the floor.

"So, then," resumed Mazarin, "your majesty thinks that the king--" he
stopped several seconds--"that the king is coming here to offer me some
small thanks?"

"I think so," said queen. Mazarin annihilated Colbert with his last
look.

At that moment the ushers announced that the king was in the
ante-chambers, which were filled with people. This announcement produced
a stir of which Colbert took advantage to escape by the door of the
_ruelle_. Anne of Austria arose, and awaited her son, standing. Louis
XIV. appeared at the threshold of the