“Ah, cursed priest!” cried Anne, when he had retired, stretching out her arm to the scarcely closed door, “one day I will make you drink the dregs of the atrocious gall you have poured out on me to-day.”

Mazarin wished to approach her.

“Leave me!” she exclaimed; “you are not a man!” and she went out of the room.

“It is you who are not a woman,” muttered Mazarin.

Then, after a moment of reverie, he remembered where he had left D’Artagnan and Porthos and that they must have overheard everything. He knit his brows and went direct to the tapestry, which he pushed aside. The closet was empty.

At the queen’s last word, D’Artagnan