At his right hand is the Cardinal, wearing a long tightly fitting _soutane_ of purple silk, with a cloak of the same colour. His countenance is perfectly impassive, save that when he moves, and the light from above strikes upon his dark eyes, they glitter. In his delicate hands he holds some papers, to which he refers from time to time: others lie on the table near him. Opposite the Cardinal are the Archbishop of Paris and the Chancellor Séguier. At the farther end of the council-table, facing the King, Anne of Austria is seated. The colour comes and goes upon her downy cheeks; but otherwise no sovereign throned in fabled state is more queenly than this golden-haired daughter of the Cæsars. The Cardinal turns towards her, but, before addressing her, his eyes are gathered fixedly upon her. Then, in a placid voice, he speaks-- “Your Majesty has been summoned by the King here present to answer certain matters laid to your charge.” Anne of Austria rises and makes an obeisance, looking towards the King, then reseats herself. “I am here to answer whatever questions his Majesty sees good to put to me,” she replies, in a clear, firm voice. “His Majesty, Madame, speaks through _my_ voice,” answers Richelieu, significantly, observing her pointed reference to the King’s presence; “I am here as his _alter ego_. It is said,” he continues, in the same impassive manner in which he had at first addressed her, “that you, Madame Anne of Austria, consort of the King, hold a treasonable correspondence in cipher with your brother, Philip, King of Spain, now waging war against this realm of France, and that therein you betray to him secrets of state to the manifest hurt and danger of the King’s armies, by affording treacherous foreknowledge of their movements and of the measures of his Government. What answer does your Majesty make to so grave a charge?” “If it be so, let these letters be produced,” answers the Queen boldly. “I declare that beyond the natural love I bear my brother and his consort, Elizabeth of France, sister to the King,--which love surely is no crime,--I have never, by word or deed, betrayed aught that I might know to the prejudice of the King, my husband, or of this great country of which I am the Queen.” “Why, then, Madame, if these letters were harmless did you write in a cipher unknown to the King’s ministers?” asks the Cardinal, bending his piercing eyes keenly upon her. “Because,” replies the Queen, “I knew that spies were set, by the King’s order, at _your_ instance,” and she points to the Cardinal, “to waylay these letters, the writing of which has been to me, next to God, my greatest comfort in much sorrow and persecution which I have suffered wrongfully since I came into France.” “Madame,” continues Richelieu, speaking with the same unmoved voice and manner, “do you know Henry de Talleyrand, Comte de Chalais, Master of the Robes to his Majesty, and once esteemed by him as his faithful subject?”