“A hundred thousand francs for this poor captain of musketeers, to be paid whenever his services shall no longer be acceptable to your majesty.”
Anne hesitated.
“To think of the Parisians,” soliloquized D’Artagnan, “offering only the other day, by an edict of the parliament, six hundred thousand francs to any man soever who would deliver up the cardinal to them, dead or alive—if alive, in order to hang him; if dead, to deny him the rites of Christian burial!”
“Come,” said Anne, “’tis reasonable, since you only ask from a queen the sixth of what the parliament has proposed;” and she signed an order for a hundred thousand francs.
“Now, then,” she said, “what next?”
“Madame, my friend Du Vallon is rich and has therefore nothing in the way of fortune to desire; but I think I remember that there was a question between him and Monsieur Mazarin as to making his estate a barony. Nay, it must have been a promise.”
“A country clown,” said Anne of Austria, “people will laugh.”
“Let them,” answered D’Artagnan. “But I am sure of one thing—that those who laugh at him in his presence will never laugh a second time.”
“Here goes the barony.” said the queen; she signed a patent.
“Now there remains the chevalier, or the Abbé d’Herblay, as your majesty pleases.”