But when the cardinal added that not only Madame de Chevreuse had been in Paris, but still further, that the queen had renewed with her one of those mysterious correspondences which at that time was named a cabal; when he affirmed that he, the cardinal, was about to unravel the most closely twisted thread of this intrigue; that at the moment of arresting in the very act, with all the proofs about her, the queen’s emissary to the exiled duchess, a musketeer had dared to interrupt the course of justice violently, by falling sword in hand upon the honest men of the law, charged with investigating impartially the whole affair in order to place it before the eyes of the king—Louis XIII could not contain himself, and he made a step toward the queen’s apartment with that pale and mute indignation which, when it broke out, led this prince to the commission of the most pitiless cruelty. And yet, in all this, the cardinal had not yet said a word about the Duke of Buckingham.
At this instant M. de Tréville entered, cool, polite, and in irreproachable costume.
Informed of what had passed by the presence of the cardinal and the alteration in the king’s countenance, M. de Tréville felt himself something like Samson before the Philistines.
Louis XIII had already placed his hand on the knob of the door; at the noise of M. de Tréville’s entrance he turned round. “You arrive in good time, Monsieur,” said the king, who, when his passions were raised to a certain point, could not dissemble; “I have learned some fine things concerning your Musketeers.”
“And I,” said Tréville, coldly, “I have some pretty things to tell Your Majesty concerning these gownsmen.”
“What?” said the king, with hauteur.
“I have the honor to inform Your Majesty,” continued M. de Tréville, in the same tone, “that a party of procureurs , commissaries, and men of