“And why,” said she to the others, “would you have Jean le Roux, who is an honest man, cut off the heads of two Christians, because he is a butcher by trade?  So long as I am his wife, I’ll not allow it.  I’d rather—­”

“Well, you are wrong!” replied her companions.  “What is’t to thee whether the meat he cuts is eaten or not eaten?  Why, thou’lt have a hundred crowns to dress thy three children all in new clothes.  Thou’rt lucky to be the wife of a butcher.  Profit, then, ‘ma mignonne’, by what God sends thee by the favor of his Eminence.”

“Let me alone!” answered the first speaker.  “I’ll not accept it.  I’ve seen these fine young gentlemen at the windows.  They look as mild as lambs.”

“Well! and are not thy lambs and calves killed?” said Femme le Bon.  “What fortune falls to this little woman!  What a pity! especially when it is from the reverend Capuchin!”

“How horrible is the gayety of the people!” said Olivier d’Entraigues, unguardedly.  All the women heard him, and began to murmur against him.

“Of the people!” said they; “and whence comes this little bricklayer with his plastered clothes?”

“Ah!” interrupted another, “dost not see that ’tis some gentleman in disguise?  Look at his white hands!  He never worked a square; ’tis some little dandy conspirator.  I’ve a great mind to go and fetch the captain of the watch to arrest him.”

The Abbe de Gondi felt all the danger of this situation, and throwing himself with an air of anger upon Olivier, and assuming the manners of a joiner, whose costume and apron he had adopted, he exclaimed, seizing him by the collar: 

“You’re just right.  ’Tis a little rascal that never works!  These two years that my father’s apprenticed him, he has done nothing but comb his hair to please the girls.  Come, get home with you!”

And, striking him with his rule, he drove him through the crowd, and returned to place himself on another part of the line.  After having well reprimanded the thoughtless page, he asked him for the letter which he said he had to give to M. de Cinq-Mars when he should have escaped.  Olivier had carried it in his pocket for two months.  He gave it him.  “It is from one prisoner to another,” said he, “for the Chevalier de jars, on leaving the Bastille, sent it me from one of his companions in captivity.”

“Ma foi!” said Gondi, “there may be some important secret in it for our friends.  I’ll open it.  You ought to have thought of it before.  Ah, bah! it is from old Bassompierre.  Let us read it.

My dear child:  I learn from the depths of the Bastille, where I still remain, that you are conspiring against the tyrant Richelieu, who does not cease to humiliate our good old nobility and the parliaments, and to sap the foundations of the edifice upon which the State reposes.  I hear that the nobles are taxed and condemned by petty judges, contrary to the privileges of their condition, forced to the arriere-ban, despite the ancient customs.”

“Ah! the old dotard!” interrupted the page, laughing immoderately.