“You see, cardinal,” replied the queen, “that your enemies are mine.”
“That is not enough madame, it is necessary that your friends should be also mine.”
“My friends, monsieur?” The queen shook her head. “Alas, I have them no longer!”
“How is it that you have no friends in your prosperity when you had many in adversity?”
“It is because in my prosperity I forgot those old friends, monsieur; because I have acted like Queen Marie de Medicis, who, returning from her first exile, treated with contempt all those who had suffered for her and, being proscribed a second time, died at Cologne abandoned by every one, even by her own son.”
“Well, let us see,” said Mazarin; “isn’t there still time to repair the evil? Search among your friends, your oldest friends.”
“What do you mean, monsieur?”
“Nothing else than I say—search.”
“Alas, I look around me in vain! I have no influence with any one. Monsieur is, as usual, led by his favorite; yesterday it was Choisy, to-day it is La Riviere, to-morrow it will be some one else. Monsieur le Prince is led by the coadjutor, who is led by Madame de Guemenee.”
“Therefore, madame, I ask you to look, not among your friends of to-day, but among those of other times.”