the queen that source of discord with which the deceased
cardinal so often caused the anger of the king to rage above
the boiling point."

Anne blushed and buried her face in her hands.

"What am I to do?" she said, bowed down beneath the voice of
her tyrant.

"Endeavor to remember the names of those faithful servants
who crossed the Channel, in spite of Monsieur de Richelieu,
tracking the roads along which they passed by their blood,
to bring back to your majesty certain jewels given by you to
Buckingham."

Anne arose, full of majesty, and as if touched by a spring,
and looking at the cardinal with the haughty dignity which
in the days of her youth had made her so powerful: "You are
insulting me!" she said.

"I wish," continued Mazarin, finishing, as it were, the
speech this sudden movement of the queen had cut; "I wish,
in fact, that you should now do for your husband what you
formerly did for your lover."

"Again that accusation!" cried the queen. "I thought that
calumny was stifled or extinct; you have spared me till now,
but since you speak of it, once for all, I tell you ---- "

"Madame, I do not ask you to tell me," said Mazarin,