“If it is I whom your majesty interrogates,” replied the coadjutor in the same calm manner, “I reply that I hold monsieur le maréchal’s opinion in every respect.” The color mounted to the queen’s face; her fine blue eyes seemed to start out of her head and her carmine lips, compared by all the poets of the day to a pomegranate in flower, were trembling with anger. Mazarin himself, who was well accustomed to the domestic outbreaks of this disturbed household, was alarmed. “Give up Broussel!” she cried; “fine counsel, indeed. Upon my word! one can easily see it comes from a priest.” Gondy remained firm, and the abuse of the day seemed to glide over his head as the sarcasms of the evening before had done; but hatred and revenge were accumulating in his heart silently and drop by drop. He looked coldly at the queen, who nudged Mazarin to make him say something in his turn. Mazarin, according to his custom, was thinking much and saying little. “Ho! ho!” said he, “good advice, advice of a friend. I, too, would give up that good Monsieur Broussel, dead or alive, and all would be at an end.” “If you yield him dead, all will indeed be at an end, my lord, but quite otherwise than you mean.” “Did I say ‘dead or alive?’” replied Mazarin. “It was only a way of speaking. You know I am not familiar with the French language, which you, monsieur le coadjuteur, both speak and write so well.” (“This is a council of state,” D’Artagnan remarked to Porthos; “but we held better ones at La Rochelle, with Athos and Aramis.” “At the Saint Gervais bastion,” said Porthos. “There and elsewhere.”) The coadjutor let the storm pass over his head and resumed, still with the same tranquillity: “Madame, if the opinion I have submitted to you does not please you it is doubtless because you have better counsels to follow. I know too well the wisdom of the queen and that of her advisers to suppose that they will leave the capital long in trouble that may lead to a revolution.” “Thus, then, it is your opinion,” said Anne of Austria, with a sneer and biting her lips with rage, “that yesterday’s riot, which to-day is already a rebellion, to-morrow may become a revolution?” “Yes, madame,” replied the coadjutor, gravely. “But if I am to believe you, sir, the people seem to have thrown off all restraint.” “It is a bad year for kings,” said Gondy, shaking his head; “look at England, madame.” “Yes; but fortunately we have no Oliver Cromwell in France,” replied the queen. “Who knows?” said Gondy; “such men are like thunderbolts—one recognizes them only when they have struck.” Every one shuddered and there was a moment of silence, during which the queen pressed her hand to her side, evidently to still the beatings of her heart. (“Porthos,” murmured D’Artagnan, “look well at that priest.” “Yes,” said Porthos, “I see him. What then?” “Well, he is a man.” Porthos looked at D’Artagnan in astonishment. Evidently he did not understand his meaning.)