" said Guenaud, seating himself beside the bed, "your eminence
has worked very hard during your life; your eminence has suffered much."

"But I am not old, I fancy. The late M. de Richelieu was but seventeen
months younger than I am when he died, and died of a mortal disease. I
am young, Guenaud: remember, I am scarcely fifty-two."

"Oh! my lord, you are much more than that. How long did the Fronde
last?"

"For what purpose do you put such a question to me?"

"For a medical calculation, monseigneur."

"Well, some ten years--off and on."

"Very well, be kind enough to reckon every year of the Fronde as three
years--that makes thirty; now twenty and fifty-two makes seventy-two
years. You are seventy-two, my lord; and that is a great age."

Whilst saying this, he felt the pulse of his patient. This pulse
was full of such fatal indications, that the physician continued,
notwithstanding the interruptions of the patient: "Put down the years of
the Fronde at four each, and you have lived eighty-two years."

"Are you speaking seriously, Guenaud?"

"Alas! yes, monseigneur."

"You take a roundabout way, then, to inform me that I am very ill?"

"Ma foi! yes, my lord, and with a man of the mind and courage of your
eminence, it ought not to be necessary to do."

The cardinal breathed with such difficulty that he inspired pity even
in a pitiless physician. "There are diseases and diseases," resumed
Mazarin. "From some of them people escape."

"That is true, my lord."

"Is it not?" cried Mazarin, almost joyously; "for, in short, what else
would be the use of power, of strength of will? What would the use of
genius be--your genius, Guenaud? What would be the use of science and
art, if the patient, who disposes of all that, cannot be saved from
peril?"

Guenaud was about to open his mouth, but Mazarin continued:

"Remember," said he, "I am the most confiding of your patients; remember
I obey you blindly, and that consequently----"

"I know all that," said Guenaud.

"I shall be cured, then?"

"Monseigneur, there is neither strength of will, nor power, nor genius,
nor science that can resist a disease which God doubtless sends, or
which He casts upon the earth at the creation, with full power to
destroy and kill mankind. When the disease is mortal, it kills, and
nothing can----"

"Is--my--disease--mortal?" asked Mazarin.

"Yes, my lord."

His eminence sank down for a moment, like an unfortunate wretch who is
c