Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

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.
    "Endeavor to remember the names of those faithful servants who crossed the Channel, in spite of Monsieur de Richelieu, tracking the roads along which they passed by their blood, to bring back to your majesty certain jewels given by you to Buckingham."
    Anne arose, full of majesty, and as if touched by a spring, and looking at the cardinal with the haughty dignity which in the days of her youth had made her so powerful: "You are insulting me!" she said.
    "I wish," continued Mazarin, finishing, as it were, the speech this sudden movement of the queen had cut; "I wish, in fact, that you should now do for your husband what you formerly did for your lover."
    "Again that accusation!" cried the queen. "I thought that calumny was stifled or extinct; you have spared me till now, but since you speak of it, once for all, I tell you——"
    "Madame, I do not ask you to tell me," said Mazarin, astounded by this returning courage.
    "I will tell you all," replied Anne. "Listen: there were in truth, at that epoch, four devoted hearts, four loyal spirits, four faithful swords, who saved more than my life—my honor——"
    "Ah! you confess it!" exclaimed Mazarin.
    "Is it only the guilty whose honor is at the sport of others, sir? and cannot women be dishonored by appearances? Yes, appearances were against me and I was about to suffer dishonor. However, I swear I was not guilty, I swear it by——"
    The queen looked around her for some sacred object by which she could swear, and taking out of a cupboard hidden in the tapestry, a small coffer of rosewood set in silver, and laying it on the altar:
    "I swear," she said, "by these sacred relics that Buckingham was not my lover."
    "What relics are those by which you swear?" asked Mazarin, smiling. "I am incredulous."
    The queen untied from around her throat a small golden key which hung there, and presented it to the cardinal.
    "Open, sir," she said, "and look for yourself."
    Mazarin opened the coffer; a knife, covered with rust, and two letters, one of which was stained with blood, alone met his gaze.
    "What are these things?" he asked.
    "What are these things?" replied Anne, with queen–like dignity, extending toward the open coffer an arm, despite the lapse of years, still beautiful. "These two letters are the only ones I ever wrote to him. This knife is the knife with which Felton stabbed him. Read the letters and see if I have lied or spoken the truth."
    But Mazarin, notwithstanding this permission, instead of reading the letters, took the knife which the dying Buckingham had snatched out of the wound and sent by Laporte to the queen. The blade was red, for the blood had become rust; after a momentary examination during which the queen became as white as the cloth which covered the altar on which she was leaning, he put it back into the coffer with an involuntary shudder.
    "It is well, madame, I believe your oath."
    "No, no, read," exclaimed the queen, indignantly; "read, I command you, for I am resolved that everything shall be finished to–night and never will I recur to this subject again. Do you think," she said, with a ghastly smile, "that I shall be inclined to reopen this coffer to answer any future accusations?"
    Mazarin, overcome by this determination, read the