Chapter XI: Mazarin's Policy.

Instead of the hesitation with which he had accosted the cardinal a  quarter of an hour before, there might be read in the eyes of the young  king that will against which a struggle might be maintained, and which  might be crushed by its own impotence,  but which, at least, would  preserve, like a wound in the depth of the heart, the remembrance of its  defeat.

"This time, my lord cardinal, we have to deal with something more easily  found than a million."

"Do you think so, sire?" said Mazarin, looking at the king with that  penetrating eye which was accustomed to read to the bottom of hearts.

"Yes, I think so; and when you know the object of my request -"

"And do you think I do not know it, sire?"

"You know what remains for me to say to you?"

"Listen, sire; these are King Charles's own words -"

"Oh, impossible!"

"Listen.  'And if that miserly, beggarly Italian,' said he -"

"My lord cardinal!"

"That is the sense, if not the words.  Eh! Good heavens!  I wish him no  ill on that account; one is biased by his passions.  He said to you: 'If  that vile Italian refuses the million we ask of him, sire, - if we are  forced, for want of money, to renounce diplomacy, well, then, we will ask  him to grant us five hundred gentlemen.'"

The king started, for the cardinal was only mistaken in the number.

"Is not that it, sire?" cried the minister, with a triumphant accent.  "And then he added some fine words: he said, 'I have friends on the other  side of the channel, and these friends only want a leader and a banner.   When they see me, when they behold the banner of France, they will rally  around me,