as had many
affairs of gallantry; and if he has fostered his amours by promises of
eternal constancy, he must likewise have sown the seeds of hatred by his
eternal infidelities."

"No doubt," said Milady, coolly, "such a woman may be found."

"Well, such a woman, who would place the knife of Jacques Clement or of
Ravaillac in the hands of a fanatic, would save France."

"Yes; but she would then be the accomplice of an assassination."

"Were the accomplices of Ravaillac or of Jacques Clement ever known?"

"No; for perhaps they were too high-placed for anyone to dare look for
them where they were. The Palace of Justice would not be burned down for
everybody, monseigneur."

"You think, then, that the fire at the Palace of Justice was not caused
by chance?" asked Richelieu, in the tone with which he would have put a
question of no importance.

"I, monseigneur?" replied Milady. "I think nothing; I quote a fact, that
is all. Only I say that if I were named Madame de Montpensier, or the
Queen Marie de Medicis, I should use less precautions than I take, being
simply called Milady Clarik."

"That is just," said Richelieu. "What do you require, then?"

"I require an order which would ratify beforehand all that I should
think proper to do for the greatest good of France."

"But in the first place, this woman I have described must be found who
is desirous of avenging herself upon the duke."

"She is found," said Milady.

"Then the miserable fanatic must be found who will serve as an
instrument of God's justice."

"He will be found."

"Well," said the cardinal, "then it will be time to claim the order
which you just now required."

"Your Eminence is right," replied Milady; "and I have been wrong in
seeing in the mission with which you honor me anything but that which
it really is--that is, to announce to his Grace, on the part of your
Eminence, that you are acquainted with the different disguises by means
of which he succeeded in approaching the queen during the fete given by
Madame the Constable; that you have proofs of the interview granted at
the Louvre by the queen to a certain Italian astrologer who was no other
than the Duke of Buckingham; that you have ordered a little romance of
a satirical nature to be written upon the adventures of Amiens, with a
plan of the gardens in which those adventures took place, and portraits
of the actors who figured in them; that Montague is in the Bastille, and
that the tortur