“This means, sire,” replied the cardinal, “that I was desirous of presenting Her Majesty with these two studs, and that not daring to offer them myself, I adopted this means of inducing her to accept them.”

“And I am the more grateful to your Eminence,” replied Anne of Austria, with a smile that proved she was not the dupe of this ingenious gallantry, “from being certain that these two studs alone have cost you as much as all the others cost His Majesty.”

Then saluting the king and the cardinal, the queen resumed her way to the chamber in which she had dressed, and where she was to take off her costume.

The attention which we have been obliged to give, during the commencement of the chapter, to the illustrious personages we have introduced into it, has diverted us for an instant from him to whom Anne of Austria owed the extraordinary triumph she had obtained over the cardinal; and who, confounded, unknown, lost in the crowd gathered at one of the doors, looked on at this scene, comprehensible only to four persons⁠—the king, the queen, his Eminence, and himself.