, according to your Majesty's command, I have
frequently interrogated, told me this morning that the night before last
her Majesty sat up very late, that this morning she wept much, and that
she was writing all day."

"That's it!" cried the king; "to him, no doubt. Cardinal, I must have
the queen's papers."

"But how to take them, sire? It seems to me that it is neither your
Majesty nor myself who can charge himself with such a mission."

"How did they act with regard to the Marechale d'Ancre?" cried the
king, in the highest state of choler; "first her closets were thoroughly
searched, and then she herself."

"The Marechale d'Ancre was no more than the Marechale d'Ancre. A
Florentine adventurer, sire, and that was all; while the august spouse
of your Majesty is Anne of Austria, Queen of France--that is to say, one
of the greatest princesses in the world."

"She is not the less guilty, Monsieur Duke! The more she has forgotten
the high position in which she was placed, the more degrading is her
fall. Besides, I long ago determined to put an end to all these petty
intrigues of policy and love. She has near her a certain Laporte."

"Who, I believe, is the mainspring of all this, I confess," said the
cardinal.

"You think then, as I do, that she deceives me?" said the king.

"I believe, and I repeat it to your Majesty, that the queen conspires
against the power of the king, but I have not said against his honor."

"And I--I tell you against both. I tell you the queen does not love
me; I tell you she loves another; I tell you she loves that infamous
Buckingham! Why did you not have him arrested while in Paris?"

"Arrest the Duke! Arrest the prime minister of King Charles I! Think of
it, sire! What a scandal! And if the suspicions of your Majesty, which
I still continue to doubt, should prove to have any foundation, what a
terrible disclosure, what a fearful scandal!"

"But as he exposed himself like a vagabond or a thief, he should have
been--"

Louis XIII stopped, terrified at what he was about to say, while
Richelieu, stretching out his neck, waited uselessly for the word which
had died on the lips of the king.

"He should have been--?"

"Nothing," said the king, "nothing. But all the time he was in Paris,
you, of course, did not lose sight of him?"

"No, sire."

"Where did he lodge?"

"Rue de la Harpe. No. 75."

"Where is that?"

"By the side of the Luxembourg."

"And you are certain that the qu