When the hour appointed for the audience arrived Athos was obliged to stay until the queen, who was waited upon by a new deputation from Paris, had consulted with her minister as to the propriety and manner of receiving them. All were fully engrossed with the affairs of the day; Athos could not therefore have chosen a more inauspicious moment to speak of his friends—poor atoms, lost in that raging whirlwind.
But Athos was a man of inflexible determination; he firmly adhered to a purpose once formed, when it seemed to him to spring from conscience and to be prompted by a sense of duty. He insisted on being introduced, saying that although he was not a deputy from Monsieur de Conti, or Monsieur de Beaufort, or Monsieur de Bouillon, or Monsieur d’Elbeuf, or the coadjutor, or Madame de Longueville, or Broussel, or the Parliament, and although he had come on his own private account, he nevertheless had things to say to her majesty of the utmost importance.
The conference being finished, the queen summoned him to her cabinet.
Athos was introduced and announced by name. It was a name that too often resounded in her majesty’s ears and too often vibrated in her heart for Anne of Austria not to recognize it; yet she remained impassive, looking at him with that fixed stare which is tolerated only in women who are queens, either by the power of beauty or by the right of birth.
“It is then a service which you propose to render us, count?” asked Anne of Austria, after a moment’s silence.
“Yes, madame, another service,” said Athos, shocked that the queen did not seem to recognize him.
Athos had a noble heart, and made, therefore, but a poor courtier.
Anne frowned. Mazarin, who was sitting at a table folding up papers, as if he had only been a secretary of state, looked up.
“Speak,” said the queen.
Mazarin turned again to his papers.