The deputies bowed and left the room.

“What!” exclaimed the queen, when the last of them had quitted the apartment, “you would yield to these limbs of the law — these advocates?”

“To promote your majesty’s welfare, madame,” replied Mazarin, fixing his penetrating eyes on the queen, “there is no sacrifice that I would not make.”

Anne dropped her head and fell into one of those reveries so habitual with her. A recollection of Athos came into her mind. His fearless deportment, his words, so firm, yet dignified, the shades which by one word he had evoked, recalled to her the past in all its intoxication of poetry and romance, youth, beauty, the eclat of love at twenty years of age, the bloody death