“You think, then, that the fire at the Palace of Justice was not caused by chance?” asked Richelieu, in the tone with which he would have put a question of no importance.
“I, monseigneur?” replied Milady. “I think nothing; I quote a fact, that is all. Only I say that if I were named Madame de Montpensier, or the Queen Marie de Médicis, I should use less precautions than I take, being simply called Milady Clarik.”
“That is just,” said Richelieu. “What do you require, then?”
“I require an order which would ratify beforehand all that I should think proper to do for the greatest good of France.”
“But in the first place, this woman I have described must be found who is desirous of avenging herself upon the duke.”
“She is found,” said Milady.
“Then the miserable fanatic must be found who will serve as an instrument of God’s justice.”
“He will be found.”
“Well,” said the cardinal, “then it will be time to claim the order which you just now required.”
“Your Eminence is right,” replied Milady; “and I have been wrong in seeing in the mission with which you honor me anything but that which it really is—that is, to announce to his Grace, on the part of your Eminence, that you are acquainted with the different disguises by means of which he succeeded in approaching the queen during the fête given by Madame the Constable; that you have proofs of the interview granted at the Louvre by the queen to a certain Italian astrologer who was no other than the Duke of Buckingham; that you have ordered a little romance of