rebel,” cried Anne, unable to dissimulate before the
coadjutor, whom she looked upon, and probably with reason,
as the promoter of the tumult. “Revolt! thus it is called by
those who have wished for this demonstration and who are,
perhaps, the cause of it; but, wait, wait! the king’s
authority will put all this to rights.”
“Was it to tell me that, madame,” coldly replied Gondy,
“that your majesty admitted me to the honor of entering your
presence?”
“No, my dear coadjutor,” said Mazarin; “it was to ask your
advice in the unhappy dilemma in which we find ourselves.”
“Is it true,” asked Gondy, feigning astonishment, “that her
majesty summoned me to ask for my opinion?”
“Yes,” said the queen, “it is requested.”
The coadjutor bowed.
“Your majesty wishes, then —- ”
“You to say what you would do in her place,” Mazarin
hastened to reply.
The coadjutor looked at the queen, who replied by a sign in
the affirmative.
“Were I in her majesty’s place,” said Gondy, coldly, “I
should not hesitate; I should release Broussel.”
“And if I do not give him up, what think you will be the
result?” exclaimed the queen.
“I believe that not a stone in Paris will remain unturned,”
put in the marechal.
“It was not your opinion that I asked,” said the queen,
sharply, without even turning around.
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“If it is I whom your majesty interrogates,” replied the
coadjutor in the same calm manner, “I reply that I hold
monsieur le marechal’s opinion in every respect.”
The color mounted to the queen’s face; her fine blue eyes
seemed to start out of her head and her carmine lips,
compared by all the poets of the day to a pomegranate in
flower, were trembling with anger. Mazarin himself, who was
well accustomed to the domestic outbreaks of this disturbed
household, was alarmed.
“Give up Broussel!” she cried; “fine counsel, indeed. Upon
my word! one can easily see it comes from a priest.
Gondy remained firm, and the abuse of the day seemed to
glide over his head as the sarcasms of the evening before
had done; but hatred and revenge were accumulating in his
heart silently and drop by drop. He looked coldly at the
queen, who nudged Mazarin to make him say something in his
turn.
Mazarin, according to his custom, was thinking much and
saying little.
“Ho! ho!” said he, “good advice, advice of a friend. I, too,
would give up that good Monsieur Broussel, dead or alive,
and all would be at an end.”
“If you yield him dead, all will indeed be at an end, my
lord, but quite otherwise than you mean.”
“Did I say `dead or alive?'” replied Mazarin. “It was only a
way of speaking. You know I am not familiar with the French
language, which you, monsieur le coadjuteur, both speak and
write so well.”
(“This is a council of state,” D’Artagnan remarked to
Porthos; “but we held better ones at La Rochelle, with Athos
and Aramis.”
“At the Saint Gervais bastion,” said Porthos.
“There and elsewhere.”)
The coadjutor let the storm pass over his head and resumed,
still with the same tranquillity:
“Madame, if the opinion I have submitted to you does not
please you it is doubtless because you have better counsels
to follow. I know too well the wisdom of the queen and that
of her advisers to suppose that they will leave the capital
long in trouble that may lead to a revolution.”
“Thus, then, it is your opinion,” said Anne of Austria, with
a sneer and biting her lips with rage, “that yesterday’s
riot, which to-day is already a rebellion, to-morrow may
become a revolution?”
“Yes, madame,” replied the coadjutor, gravely.
“But if I am to believe you, sir, the people seem to have
thrown off all restraint.”
“It is a bad year for kings,” said Gondy, shaking his head;
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“look at England, madame.”
“Yes; but fortunately we have no Oliver Cromwell in France,”
replied the queen.
“Who knows?” said Gondy; “such men are like thunderbolts —
one recognizes them only when they have struck.”