“What more do you want?” asked the queen, coloring, as she found that she had to deal with a mind as subtle as her own.

“A hundred thousand francs for this poor captain of musketeers, to be paid whenever his services shall no longer be acceptable to your majesty.”

Anne hesitated.

“To think of the Parisians,” soliloquized D’Artagnan, “offering only the other day, by an edict of the parliament, six hundred thousand francs to any man soever who would deliver up the cardinal to them, dead or alive — if alive, in order to hang him; if dead, to deny him the rites of Christian burial!”

“Come,” said Anne, “‘tis reasonable, since you only ask from a queen the sixth of what the parliament has proposed;”