“Save the queen!” cried Mazarin to the coadjutor.
Gondy sprang to the window and threw it open; he recognized Louvières 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 Louvières, 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 today.”
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 and found the two friends walking up and down.
“Why did you leave the closet, Monsieur d’Artagnan?” asked the cardinal.
“Because,” replied d’Artagnan, “the queen desired everyone to leave and I thought that this command was intended for us as well as for the rest.”
“And you have been here since—”
“About a quarter of an hour,” said d’Artagnan, motioning to Porthos not to contradict him.
Mazarin saw the sign and remained convinced that d’Artagnan had seen and heard everything; but he was pleased with his falsehood.
“Decidedly, Monsieur d’Artagnan, you are the man I have been seeking. You may reckon upon me and so may your friend.” Then bowing to the two musketeers with his most gracious smile, he re-entered his closet more calmly, for on the departure of de Gondy the uproar had ceased as though by enchantment.
XLIX
Misfortune Refreshes the Memory
Anne of Austria returned to her oratory, furious.
“What!” she cried, wringing her beautiful hands, “What! the people have seen Monsieur de Condé, a prince of the blood royal, arrested by my mother-in-law, Maria de Médicis; they saw my mother-in-law, their former regent, expelled by the cardinal; they saw Monsieur de Vendôme, that is to say, the son of Henry IV, a prisoner at Vincennes; and whilst these great personages were imprisoned, insulted and threatened, they said nothing; and now for a Broussel—good God! what, then, is to become of royalty?”
The queen unconsciously touched here upon the exciting question. The people had made no demonstration for the princes, but they had risen for Broussel; they were taking the part of a plebeian, and in defending Broussel they instinctively felt they were defending themselves.
During this time Mazarin walked up and down the study, glancing from time to time at his beautiful Venetian mirror, starred in every direction. “Ah!” he said, “it is sad, I know well, to be forced to yield thus; but, pshaw! we shall have our revenge. What matters it about Broussel—it is a name, not a thing.”
Mazarin, clever politician as he was, was for once mistaken; Broussel was a thing, not a name.
The next morning, therefore, when Broussel made his entrance into Paris in a large carriage, having his son Louvières at his side and Friquet behind the vehicle, the people threw themselves in his way and cries of “Long live Broussel!” “Long live our father!” resounded from all parts and was death to Mazarin’s ears; and the cardinal’s spies brought bad news from every direction, which greatly agitated the minister, but was calmly received by the queen. The latter seemed to be maturing in her mind some great stroke, a fact which increased the uneasiness of the cardinal, who knew the proud princess and dreaded much the determination of Anne of Austria.
The coadjutor returned to parliament more a monarch than king, queen, and cardinal all three together. By his advice a decree from parliament summoned the citizens to lay down their arms and demolish the barricades. They now knew that it required but one hour to take up arms again and one night to reconstruct the barricades.
Rochefort had returned to the Chevalier d’Humières his fifty horsemen, less two, missing at roll call. But the chevalier was himself at heart a Frondist and would hear nothing said of compensation.
The mendicant had gone to his old place on the steps of Saint Eustache and was again distributing holy water with one hand and asking alms with the other. No one could suspect that those two hands had been engaged with others in drawing out from the social edifice the keystone of royalty.
Louvières was proud and satisfied; he had taken revenge on Mazarin and had aided in his father’s deliverance from prison.
