men infinitely more than men.
One of the grand causes of this prejudice was the friendship of Anne of
Austria for Mme. de Chevreuse. These two women gave him more uneasiness
than the war with Spain, the quarrel with England, or the embarrassment
of the finances. In his eyes and to his conviction, Mme. de Chevreuse
not only served the queen in her political intrigues, but, what
tormented him still more, in her amorous intrigues.

At the first word the cardinal spoke of Mme. de Chevreuse--who, though
exiled to Tours and believed to be in that city, had come to Paris,
remained there five days, and outwitted the police--the king flew into a
furious passion. Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called
Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in
understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and
never by reason.

But when the cardinal added that not only Mme. de Chevreuse had been
in Paris, but still further, that the queen had renewed with her one of
those mysterious correspondences which at that time was named a CABAL;
when he affirmed that he, the cardinal, was about to unravel the most
closely twisted thread of this intrigue; that at the moment of arresting
in the very act, with all the proofs about her, the queen's emissary
to the exiled duchess, a Musketeer had dared to interrupt the course of
justice violently, by falling sword in hand upon the honest men of the
law, charged with investigating impartially the whole affair in order
to place it before the eyes of the king--Louis XIII could not contain
himself, and he made a step toward the queen's apartment with that pale
and mute indignation which, when in broke out, led this prince to the
commission of the most pitiless cruelty. And yet, in all this, the
cardinal had not yet said a word about the Duke of Buckingham.

At this instant M. de Treville entered, cool, polite, and in
irreproachable costume.

Informed of what had passed by the presence of the cardinal and the
alteration in the king's countenance, M. de Treville felt himself
something like Samson before the Philistines.

Louis XIII had already placed his hand on the knob of the door; at the
noise of M. de Treville's entrance he turned round. "You arrive in good
time, monsieur," said the king, who, when his passions were raised to
a certain point, could not dissemble; "I have learned some fine things
concerning your Musketeers."

"And I," said T