“Still!” said the queen. “I thought that we were finally quit of Monsieur de Beaufort.”
“Yes, you saw only the torrent that threatened to overturn everything and you gave no attention to the still water. There is, however, a proverb current in France relating to water which is quiet.”
“Continue,” said the queen.
“Well, then, madame, not a day passes in which I do not suffer affronts from your princes and your lordly servants, all of them automata who do not perceive that I wind up the spring that makes them move, nor do they see that beneath my quiet demeanor lies the still scorn of an injured, irritated man, who has sworn to himself to master them one of these days. We have arrested Monsieur de Beaufort, but he is the least dangerous among them. There is the Prince de Condé——”
“The hero of Rocroy. Do you think of him?”
“Yes, madame, often and often, but pazienza, as we say in Italy; next, after Monsieur de Condé, comes the Duke of Orleans.”
“What are you saying? The first prince of the blood, the king’s uncle!”
“No! not the first prince of the blood, not the king’s uncle, but the base conspirator, the soul of every cabal, who pretends to lead the brave people who are weak enough to believe in the honor of a prince of the blood—not the prince nearest to the throne, not the king’s uncle, I repeat, but the murderer of Chalais, of Montmorency and of Cinq-Mars, who is playing now the same game he played long ago and who thinks that he will win the game because he has a new adversary—instead of a man who threatened, a man who smiles. But he is mistaken; I shall not leave so near the queen that source of discord with which the deceased cardinal so often caused the anger of the king to rage above the boiling point.”
Anne blushed and buried her face in her hands.
“What am I to do?” she said, bowed down beneath the voice of her tyrant.