amis had been perfectly correct in his supposition; for hardly had she
left the house in the Place Baudoyer than Madame de Chevreuse proceeded
homeward. She was doubtless afraid of being followed, and by this means
thought she might succeed in throwing those who might be following her
off their guard; but scarcely had she arrived within the door of the
hotel, and hardly had assured herself that no one who could cause her
any uneasiness was on her track, when she opened the door of the garden,
leading into another street, and hurried towards the Rue Croix des
Petits-Champs, where M. Colbert resided.

We have already said that evening, or rather night, had closed in; it
was a dark, thick night, besides; Paris had once more sunk into its
calm, quiescent state, enshrouding alike within its indulgent mantle the
high-born duchesse carrying out her political intrigue, and the simple
citizen's wife, who, having been detained late by a supper in the city,
was making her way slowly homewards, hanging on the arm of a lover,
by the shortest possible route. Madame de Chevreuse had been too well
accustomed to nocturnal political intrigues to be ignorant that a
minister never denies himself, even at his own private residence, to
any young and beautiful woman who may chance to object to the dust and
confusion of a public office, or to old women, as full of experience
as of years, who dislike the indiscreet echo of official residences. A
valet received the duchesse under the peristyle, and received her, it
must be admitted, with some indifference of manner; he intimated, after
having looked at her face, that it was hardly at such an hour that one
so advanced in years as herself could be permitted to disturb Monsieur
Colbert's important occupations. But Madame de Chevreuse, without
looking or appearing to be annoyed, wrote her name upon a leaf of her
tablets--a name which had but too frequently sounded so disagreeably in
the ears of Louis XIII. and of the great cardinal. She wrote her name in
the large, ill-formed characters of the higher classes of that period,
handed it to the valet, without uttering a word, but with so haughty and
imperious a gesture, that the fellow, well accustomed to judge of people
from their manners and appearance, perceived at once the quality of the
person before him, bowed his head, and ran to M. Colbert's room. The
minister could not control a sudden exclamation as he opened the paper;
and the valet, gathering