← catalogue

Cinq-Mars

by Alfred de Vigny · English · Gutenberg #3953 · 775,453 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cinq-Mars
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Cinq-Mars

Author: Alfred de Vigny


        
Release date: October 30, 2004 [eBook #3953]
                Most recently updated: March 16, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3953

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CINQ-MARS ***



Produced by David Widger





CINQ-MARS

By Alfred De Vigny


With a Prefaces by CHARLES DE MAZADE, and GASTON BOISSIER of the French
Academy.




ALFRED DE VIGNY

The reputation of Alfred de Vigny has endured extraordinary vicissitudes
in France. First he was lauded as the precursor of French romantic
poetry and stately prose; then he sank in semi-oblivion, became the
curiosity of criticism, died in retirement, and was neglected for a long
time, until the last ten years or so produced a marked revolution
of taste in France. The supremacy of Victor Hugo has been, if not
questioned, at least mitigated; other poets have recovered from their
obscurity. Lamartine shines now like a lamp relighted; and the pure,
brilliant, and profoundly original genius of Alfred de Vigny now takes,
for the first time, its proper place as one of the main illuminating
forces of the nineteenth century.

It was not until one hundred years after this poet’s birth that it
became clearly recognized that he is one of the most important of
all the great writers of France, and he is distinguished not only in
fiction, but also in poetry and the drama. He is a follower of Andre
Chenier, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, a lyric sun, a philosophic poet,
later, perhaps in consequence of the Revolution of 1830, becoming a
“Symbolist.” He has been held to occupy a middle ground between De
Musset and Chenier, but he has also something suggestive of Madame de
Stael, and, artistically, he has much in common with Chateaubriand,
though he is more coldly impersonal and probably much more sincere in
his philosophy. If Sainte-Beuve, however, calls the poet in his Nouveaux
Lundis a “beautiful angel, who has been drinking vinegar,” then the
modern reader needs a strong caution against malice and raillery, if not
jealousy and perfidy, although the article on De Vigny abounds otherwise
with excessive critical cleverness.

At times, indeed, under the cruel deceptions of love, he seemed to lose
faith in his idealism; his pessimism, nevertheless, always remained
noble, restrained, sympathetic, manifesting itself not in appeals for
condolence, but in pitying care for all who were near and dear to him.
Yet his lofty prose and poetry, interpenetrated with the stern despair
of pessimistic idealism, will always be unintelligible to the many. As a
poet, De Vigny appeals to the chosen few alone. In his dramas his genius
is more emancipated from himself, in his novels most of all. It is by
these that he is most widely known, and by these that he exercised the
greatest influence on the literary life of his generation.

 Alfred-Victor, Count de Vigny, was born in Loches, Touraine, March 27,
1797. His father was an army officer, wounded in the Seven Years’ War.
Alfred, after having been well educated, also selected a military career
and received a commission in the “Mousquetaires Rouges,” in 1814, when
barely seventeen. He served until 1827, “twelve long years of peace,”
 then resigned. Already in 1822 appeared a volume of ‘Poemes’ which was
hardly noticed, although containing poetry since become important to
the evolution of French verse: ‘La Neige, le Coy, le Deluge, Elva, la
Frigate’, etc., again collected in ‘Poemes antiques et modernes’ (1826).
Other poems were published after his death in ‘Les Destinies’ (1864).

Under the influence of Walter Scott, he wrote a historical romance in
1826, ‘Cinq-Mars, ou une Conjuration sans Louis XIII’. It met with
the most brilliant and decided success and was crowned by the Academy.
Cinq-Mars will always be remembered as the earliest romantic novel
in France and the greatest and most dramatic picture of Richelieu now
extant. De Vigny was a convinced Anglophile, well acquainted with the
writings of Shakespeare and Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Matthew
Arnold, and Leopardi. He also married an English lady in 1825--Lydia
Bunbury.

Other prose works are ‘Stello’ (1832), in the manner of Sterne and
Diderot, and ‘Servitude et Grandeur militaire’ (1835), the language
of which is as caustic as that of Merimee. As a dramatist, De Vigny
produced a translation of ‘Othello--Le More de Venice’ (1829); also ‘La
Marechale d’Ancre’ (1832); both met with moderate success only. But a
decided “hit” was ‘Chatterton’ (1835), an adaption from his prose-work
‘Stello, ou les Diables bleus’; it at once established his reputation
on the stage; the applause was most prodigious, and in the annals of
the French theatre can only be compared with that of ‘Le Cid’. It was a
great victory for the Romantic School, and the type of Chatterton, the
slighted poet, “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in
his pride,” became contagious as erstwhile did the type of Werther.

For twenty years before his death Alfred de Vigny wrote nothing. He
lived in retirement, almost a recluse, in La Charente, rarely visiting
Paris. Admitted into L’Academie Francaise in 1845, he describes in his
‘Journal d’un Poete’ his academic visits and the reception held out to
him by the members of L’Institut. This work appeared posthumously in
1867.

He died in Paris, September 17, 1863.

                  CHARLES DE MAZADE
                de l’Academie Francaise.




PREFACE

Considering Alfred de Vigny first as a writer, it is evident that he
wished the public to regard him as different from the other romanticists
of his day; in fact, in many respects, his method presents a striking
contrast to theirs. To their brilliant facility, their prodigious
abundance, and the dazzling luxury of color in their pictures of life
he opposes a style always simple, pure, clear, with delicacy of touch,
careful drawing of character, correct locution, and absolute chastity.
Yet, even though he had this marked regard for purity in literary style,
no writer had more dislike of mere pedantry. His high ideal in literary
art and his self-respect inspired him with an invincible repugnance
toward the artificialities of style of that period, which the
romanticists--above all, Chateaubriand, their master--had so much
abused.

Every one knows of the singular declaration made by Chateaubriand to
Joubert, while relating the details of a nocturnal voyage: “The moon
shone upon me in a slender crescent, and that prevented me from writing
an untruth, for I feel sure that had not the moon been there I should
have said in my letter that it was shining, and then you would have
convicted me of an error in my almanac!”

This habit of sacrificing truth and exactitude of impression, for the
sake of producing a harmonious phrase or a picturesque suggestion,
disgusted Alfred de Vigny. “The worst thing about writers is that they
care very little whether what they write is true, so long as they only
write,” we read on one page of his Journal. He adds, “They should seek
words only in their own consciences.” On another page he says: “The most
serious lack in literary work is sincerity. Perceiving clearly that the
combination of technical labor and research for effective expression, in
producing literary work, often leads us to a paradox, I have resolved to
sacrifice all to conviction and truth, so that this precious element of
sincerity, complete and profound, shall dominate my books and give to
them the sacred character which the divine presence of truth always
gives.”

Besides sincerity, De Vigny possessed, in a high degree, a gift which
was not less rare in that age--good taste. He had taste in the art of
writing, a fine literary tact, a sense of proportion, a perception of
delicate shades of expression, an instinct that told him what to say and
what to suppress, to insinuate, or to be left to the understanding. Even
in his innovations in form, in his boldness of style, he showed a
rare discretion; never did he do violence to the genius of the French
language, and one may apply to him without reserve the eulogy that
Quintilian pronounced upon Horace: ‘Verbis felicissime audax’.

He cherished also a fixed principle that art implied selection. He was
neither idealist nor realist, in the exclusive and opposing sense in
which we understand these terms; he recommended a scrupulous observance
of nature, and that every writer should draw as close to it as possible,
but only in order to interpret it, to reveal it with a true feeling,
yet without a too intimate analysis, and that no one should attempt to
portray it exactly or servilely copy it. “Of what use is art,” he says,
“if it is only a reduplication of existence? We see around us only too
much of the sadness and disenchantment of reality.” The three novels
that compose the volume ‘Servitude et Grandeur militaire’ are, in this
respect, models of romantic composition that never will be surpassed,
bearing witness to the truth of the formula followed by De Vigny in all
his literary work: “Art is the chosen truth.”

If, as a versifier, Alfred de Vigny does not equal the great poets of
his time, if they are his superiors in distinction and brilliancy, in
richness of vocabulary, freedom of movement, and variety of rhythm, the
cause is to be ascribed less to any lack of poetic genius than to the
nature of his inspiration, even to the laws of poesy, and to the secret
and irreducible antinomy that exists between art and thought. When,
for example, Theophile Gautier reproached him with being too little
impressed with the exigencies of rhyme, his criticism was not well
grounded, for richness of rhyme, though indispensable in works of
descriptive imagination, has no ‘raison d’etre’ in poems dominated by
sentiment and thought. But, having said that, we must recognize in his
poetry an element, serious, strong, and impressive, characteristic
of itself alone, and admire, in the strophes of ‘Mozse’, in the
imprecations of ‘Samson’, and in the ‘Destinees’, the majestic
simplicity of the most beautiful Hebraic verse.

Moreover, the true originality of De Vigny does not lie in the manner
of composition; it was primarily in the role of precursor that he played
his part on the stage of literature. Let us imagine ourselves at the
period about the beginning of the year 1822. Of the three poets who,
in making their literary debuts, had just published the ‘Meditations,
Poemes antiques et modernes, and Odes’, only one had, at that time, the
instinct of renewal in the spirit of French poesy, and a sense of
the manner in which this must be accomplished; and that one was not
Lamartine, and certainly it was not Victor Hugo.

Sainte-Beuve has said, with authority, that in Lamartine there is
something suggestive of Millevoye, of Voltaire (he of the charming
epistles), and of Fontanes; and Victor Hugo wrote with very little
variation from the technical form of his predecessors. “But with Alfred
de Vigny,” he says, “we seek in vain for a resemblance to any French
poetry preceding his work. For example, where can we find anything
resembling ‘Moise, Eloa, Doloeida’? Where did he find his inspiration
for style and composition in these poems? If the poets of the Pleiades
of the Restoration seem to have found their inspiration within
themselves, showing no trace of connection with the literature of the
past, thus throwing into confusion old habits of taste and of routine,
certain it is that among them Alfred de Vigny should be ranked first.”

Even in the collection that bears the date of 1822, some years before
the future author of Legende des Siecles had taken up romanticism,
Alfred de Vigny had already conceived the idea of setting forth, in a
series of little epics, the migrations of the human soul throughout the
ages. “One feels,” said he in his Preface, “a keen intellectual delight
in transporting one’s self, by mere force of thought, to a period of
antiquity; it resembles the pleasure an old man feels in recalling first
his early youth, and then the whole course of his life. In the age of
simplicity, poetry was devoted entirely to the beauties of the physical
forms of nature and of man; each step in advance that it has made since
then toward our own day of civilization and of sadness, seems to have
blended it more and more with our arts, and even with the sufferings of
our souls. At present, with all the serious solemnity of Religion and of
Destiny, it lends to them their chief beauty. Never discouraged, Poetry
has followed Man in his long journey through the ages, like a sweet and
beautiful companion. I have attempted, in our language, to show some of
her beauties, in following her progress toward the present day.”

The arrangement of the poems announced in this Preface is tripartite,
like that of the ‘Legende des Siecles: Poemes antiques, poemes
judaiques, poemes modernes.--Livre mystique, livre antique, livre
moderne’. But the name of precursor would be a vain title if all that
were necessary to merit it was the fact that one had been the first to
perceive a new path to literary glory, to salute it from a distance, yet
never attempt to make a nearer approach.

In one direction at least, Alfred de Vigny was a true innovator, in the
broadest and most meritorious sense of the word: he was the creator of
philosophic poetry in France. Until Jocelyn appeared, in 1836, the form
of poetic expression was confined chiefly to the ode, the ballad, and
the elegy; and no poet, with the exception of the author of ‘Moise’ and
‘Eloa’, ever dreamed that abstract ideas and themes dealing with the
moralities could be expressed in the melody of verse.

To this priority, of which he knew the full value, Alfred de Vigny laid
insistent claim. “The only merit,” he says in one of his prefaces, “that
any one ever has disputed with me in this sort of composition is the
honor of having promulgated in France all works of the kind in which
philosophic thought is presented in either epic or dramatic form.”

But it was not alone priority in the sense of time that gave him
right of way over his contemporaries; he was the most distinguished
representative of poetic philosophy of his generation. If the phrases of
Lamartine seem richer, if his flight is more majestic, De Vigny’s range
is surer and more powerful. While the philosophy of the creator of
‘Les Harmonies’ is uncertain and inconsistent, that of the poet of ‘Les
Destinees’ is strong and substantial, for the reason that the former
inspires more sentiment than ideas, while the latter, soaring far
above the narrow sphere of personal emotion, writes of everything that
occupies the intellect of man.

Thus, by his vigor and breadth of thought, by his profound understanding
of life, by the intensity of his dreams, Alfred de Vigny is superior to
Victor Hugo, whose genius was quite different, in his power to portray
picturesque scenes, in his remarkable fecundity of imagination, and in
his sovereign mastery of technique.

But nowhere in De Vigny’s work is that superiority of poetic thought so
clearly shown as in those productions wherein the point of departure was
farthest from the domain of intellect, and better than any other has he
understood that truth proclaimed by Hegel: “The passions of the soul and
the affections of the heart are matter for poetic expression only in so
far as they are general, solid, and eternal.”

De Vigny was also the only one among our poets that had a lofty ideal
of woman and of love. And in order to convince one’s self of this it
is sufficient to reread successively the four great love-poems of that
period: ‘Le Lac, La Tristesse d’Olympio, Le Souvenir, and La Colere de
Samson’.

Lamartine’s conception of love was a sort of mild ecstasy, the sacred
rapture in which the senses play no part, and noble emotions that cause
neither trouble nor remorse. He ever regarded love as a kind of sublime
and passionate religion, of which ‘Le Lac’ was the most beautiful hymn,
but in which the image of woman is so vague that she almost seems to be
absent.

On the other hand, what is ‘La Tristesse d’Olympio’ if not an admirable
but common poetic rapture, a magnificent summary of the sufferings of
the heart--a bit of lyric writing equal to the most beautiful canzoni of
the Italian masters, but wherein we find no idea of love, because all
is artificial and studied; no cry from the soul is heard,--no trace of
passion appears.

After another fashion the same criticism applies to Le Souvenir; it was
written under a stress of emotion resulting from too recent events;
and the imagination of the author, subservient to a memory relentlessly
faithful, as is often the case with those to whom passion is the chief
principle of inspiration, was far from fulfilling the duties of his high
vocation, which is to purify the passions of the poet from individual
and accidental characteristics in order to leave unhampered whatever his
work may contain that is powerful and imperishable.

Alfred de Vigny alone, of the poets of his day, in his ‘Colere de
Samson’, has risen to a just appreciation of woman and of love; his
ideal is grand and tragic, it is true, and reminds one of that gloomy
passage in Ecclesiastes which says: “Woman is more bitter than death,
and her arms are like chains.”

It is by this character of universality, of which all his writings show
striking evidence, that Alfred de Vigny is assured of immortality. A
heedless generation neglected him because it preferred to seek subjects
in strong contrast to life of its own time. But that which was not
appreciated by his contemporaries will be welcomed by posterity. And
when, in French literature, there shall remain of true romanticism only
a slight trace and the memory of a few great names, the author of the
‘Destinees’ will still find an echo in all hearts.

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has
crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments
and yearnings of the human heart. “A man does not deserve the name of
poet unless he can express personal feeling and emotion, and only that
man is worthy to be called a poet who knows how to assimilate the varied
emotions of mankind.” If this fine phrase of Goethe’s is true, if true
poetry is only that which implies a mastery of spiritual things as well
as of human emotion, Alfred de Vigny is assuredly one of our greatest
poets, for none so well as he has realized a complete vision of the
universe, no one has brought before the world with more boldness the
problem of the soul and that of humanity. Under the title of poet he
belongs not only to our national literature, but occupies a distinctive
place in the world of intellect, with Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe,
among those inspired beings who transmit throughout succeeding centuries
the light of reason and the traditions of the loftiest poetic thought.

Alfred de Vigny was elected to a chair in the French Academy in 1846 and
died at Paris, September 17, 1863.

                  GASTON BOISSIER
          Secretaire Perpetuel de l’Academie Francaise.




TRUTH IN ART

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature
than is the analysis of the human heart. We live in an age of universal
investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama,
because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other
the individual lot of man. These embrace the whole of life. But it is
the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go
beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has
borrowed from history more than ever. All of us have our eyes fixed on
our chronicles, as though, having reached manhood while going on toward
greater things, we had stopped a moment to cast up the account of our
youth and its errors. We have had to double the interest by adding to it
recollection.

As France has carried farther than other nations this love of facts, and
as I had chosen a recent and well-remembered epoch, it seemed to me that
I ought not to imitate those foreigners who in their pictures barely
show in the horizon the men who dominate their history. I placed ours in
the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy,
wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which
we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble
ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position,
at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign
alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or
on accusations of sorcery, would not perhaps have been read. But the
romance was read.

I do not mean to defend this last form of historical composition, being
convinced that the real greatness of a work lies in the substance of
the author’s ideas and sentiments, and not in the literary form in which
they are dressed. The choice of a certain epoch necessitates a certain
treatment--to another epoch it would be unsuitable; these are mere
secrets of the workshop of thought which there is no need of disclosing.
What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves
us? We hear the tones of the harp, but its graceful form conceals from
us its frame of iron. Nevertheless, since I have been convinced
that this book possesses vitality, I can not help throwing out some
reflections on the liberty which the imagination should employ in
weaving into its tapestry all the leading figures of an age, and, to
give more consistency to their acts, in making the reality of fact
give way to the idea which each of them should represent in the eyes of
posterity; in short, on the difference which I find between Truth in art
and the True in fact.

Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our
minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling
which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy? We shall
find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem
at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source--the love
of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example
of good or of evil? But the examples which the slow train of events
presents to us are scattered and incomplete. They lack always a tangible
and visible coherence leading straight on to a moral conclusion. The
acts of the human race on the world’s stage have doubtless a coherent
unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only
to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the
last man. All systems of philosophy have sought in vain to explain it,
ceaselessly rolling up their rock, which, never reaching the top, falls
back upon them--each raising its frail structure on the ruins of the
others, only to see it fall in its turn.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for
facts, wanted something fuller--some grouping, some adaptation to his
capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events
which his sight could not take in. Thus he hoped to find in the historic
recital examples which might support the moral truths of which he was
conscious. Few single careers could satisfy this longing, being only
incomplete parts of the elusive whole of the history of the world; one
was a quarter, as it were, the other a half of the proof; imagination
did the rest and completed them. From this, without doubt, sprang the
fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more
than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true
with a truth all its own.

This Truth, so beautiful, so intellectual, which I feel, I see, and long
to define, the name of which I here venture to distinguish from that of
the True, that I may the better make myself understood, is the soul of
all the arts. It is the selection of the characteristic token in all the
beauties and the grandeurs of the visible True; but it is not the
thing itself, it is something better: it is an ideal combination of its
principal forms, a luminous tint made up of its brightest colors, an
intoxicating balm of its purest perfumes, a delicious elixir of its
best juices, a perfect harmony of its sweetest sounds--in short, it is
a concentration of all its good qualities. For this Truth, and nothing
else, should strive those works of art which are a moral representation
of life-dramatic works. To attain it, the first step is undoubtedly to
learn all that is true in fact of every period, to become deeply imbued
with its general character and with its details; this involves only a
cheap tribute of attention, of patience, and of memory: But then one
must fix upon some chosen centre, and group everything around it; this
is the work of imagination, and of that sublime common-sense which is
genius itself.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the
imitation of life? Good heavens! we see only too clearly about us the
sad and disenchanting reality--the insupportable lukewarmness of feeble
characters, of shallow virtues and vices, of irresolute loves, of
tempered hates, of wavering friendships, of unsettled beliefs, of
constancy which has its height and its depth, of opinions which
evaporate. Let us dream that once upon a time have lived men stronger
and greater, who were more determined for good or for evil; that does
us good. If the paleness of your True is to follow us into art, we shall
close at once the theatre and the book, to avoid meeting it a second
time. What is wanted of works which revive the ghosts of human beings
is, I repeat, the philosophical spectacle of man deeply wrought upon
by the passions of his character and of his epoch; it is, in short, the
artistic Truth of that man and that epoch, but both raised to a higher
and ideal power, which concentrates all their forces. You recognize this
Truth in works of the imagination just as you cry out at the resemblance
of a portrait of which you have never seen the original; for true talent
paints life rather than the living.

To banish finally the scruples on this point of the consciences of some
persons, timorous in literary matters, whom I have seen affected with
a personal sorrow on viewing the rashness with which the imagination
sports with the most weighty characters of history, I will hazard the
assertion that, not throughout this work, I dare not say that, but in
many of these pages, and those perhaps not of the least merit, history
is a romance of which the people are the authors. The human mind, I
believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.
What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of
civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent
to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand
and complete.

Examine closely the origin of certain deeds, of certain heroic
expressions, which are born one knows not how; you will see them leap
out ready-made from hearsay and the murmurs of the crowd, without having
in themselves more than a shadow of truth, and, nevertheless, they will
remain historical forever. As if by way of pleasantry, and to put a joke
upon posterity, the public voice invents sublime utterances to mark,
during their lives and under their very eyes, men who, confused, avow
themselves as best they may, as not deserving of so much glory and as
not being able to support so high renown.

   [In our time has not a Russian General denied the fire of Moscow,
   which we have made heroic, and which will remain so? Has not a
   French General denied that utterance on the field of Waterloo which
   will immortalize it? And if I were not withheld by my respect for a
   sacred event, I might recall that a priest has felt it to be his
   duty to disavow in public a sublime speech which will remain the
   noblest that has ever been pronounced on a scaffold: “Son of Saint
   Louis, rise to heaven!” When I learned not long ago its real
   author, I was overcome by the destruction of my illusion, but before
   long I was consoled by a thought that does honor to humanity in my
   eyes. I feel that France has consecrated this speech, because she
   felt the need of reestablishing herself in her own eyes, of blinding
   herself to her awful error, and of believing that then and there an
   honest man was found who dared to speak aloud.]

In vain; their disclaimers are not received. Let them cry out, let them
write, let them print, let them sign--they are not listened to. These
utterances are inscribed in bronze; the poor fellows remain historical
and sublime in spite of themselves. And I do not find that all this is
done in the ages of barbarism alone; it is still going on, and it
molds the history of yesterday to the taste of public opinion--a Muse
tyrannical and capricious, which preserves the general purport and
scorns detail.

Which of you knows not of such transformation? Do you not see with your
own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction? Half
formed by the necessities of the time, a fact is hidden in the ground
obscure and incomplete, rough, misshapen, like a block of marble not yet
rough-hewn. The first who unearth it, and take it in hand, would wish
it differently shaped, and pass it, already a little rounded, into other
hands; others polish it as they pass it along; in a short time it is
exhibited transformed into an immortal statue. We disclaim it; witnesses
who have seen and heard pile refutations upon explanations; the learned
investigate, pore over books, and write. No one listens to them any more
than to the humble heroes who disown it; the torrent rolls on and bears
with it the whole thing under the form which it has pleased it to
give to these individual actions. What was needed for all this work? A
nothing, a word; sometimes the caprice of a journalist out of work. And
are we the losers by it? No. The adopted fact is always better composed
than the real one, and it is even adopted only because it is better. The
human race feels a need that its destinies should afford it a series of
lessons; more careless than we think of the reality of facts, it strives
to perfect the event in order to give it a great moral significance,
feeling sure that the succession of scenes which it plays upon earth is
not a comedy, and that since it advances, it marches toward an end, of
which the explanation must be sought beyond what is visible.

For my part, I acknowledge my gratitude to the voice of the people
for this achievement; for often in the finest life are found strange
blemishes and inconsistencies which pain me when I see them. If a man
seems to me a perfect model of a grand and noble character, and if
some one comes and tells me of a mean trait which disfigures him, I am
saddened by it, even though I do not know him, as by a misfortune which
affects me in person; and I could almost wish that he had died before
the change in his character.

Thus, when the Muse (and I give that name to art as a whole, to
everything which belongs to the domain of imagination, almost in the
same way as the ancients gave the name of Music to all education), when
the Muse has related, in her impassioned manner, the adventures of
a character whom I know to have lived; and when she reshapes his
experiences into conformity with the strongest idea of vice or
virtue which can be conceived of him--filling the gaps, veiling the
incongruities of his life, and giving him that perfect unity of conduct
which we like to see represented even in evil--if, in addition to this,
she preserves the only thing essential to the instruction of the world,
the spirit of the epoch, I know no reason why we should be more exacting
with her than with this voice of the people which every day makes every
fact undergo so great changes.

The ancients carried this liberty even into history; they wanted to
see in it only the general march, and broad movements of peoples and
nations; and on these great movements, brought to view in courses very
distinct and very clear, they placed a few colossal figures--symbols of
noble character and of lofty purpose.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double
composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches
us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original
fact.

It is because in their eyes history too was a work of art; and in
consequence of not having realized that such is its real nature, the
whole Christian world still lacks an historical monument like those
which dominate antiquity and consecrate the memory of its destinies--as
its pyramids, its obelisks, its pylons, and its porticos still dominate
the earth which was known to them, and thereby commemorate the grandeur
of antiquity.

If, then, we find everywhere evidence of this inclination to desert the
positive, to bring the ideal even into historic annals, I believe that
with greater reason we should be completely indifferent to historical
reality in judging the dramatic works, whether poems, romances, or
tragedies, which borrow from history celebrated characters. Art ought
never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
Let it be said that what is true in fact is secondary merely; it is only
an illusion the more with which it adorns itself--one of our prejudices
which it respects. It can do without it, for the Truth by which it must
live is the truth of observation of human nature, and not authenticity
of fact. The names of the characters have nothing to do with the matter.
The idea is everything; the proper name is only the example and the
proof of the idea.

So much the better for the memory of those who are chosen to represent
philosophical or moral ideas; but, once again, that is not the question.
The imagination can produce just as fine things without them; it is
a power wholly creative; the imaginary beings which it animates are
endowed with life as truly as the real beings which it brings to life
again. We believe in Othello as we do in Richard III., whose tomb is
in Westminster; in Lovelace and Clarissa as in Paul and Virginia, whose
tombs are in the Isle of France. It is with the same eye that we must
watch the performance of its characters, and demand of the Muse only her
artistic Truth, more lofty than the True--whether collecting the traits
of a character dispersed among a thousand entire individuals, she
composes from them a type whose name alone is imaginary; or whether she
goes to their tomb to seek and to touch with her galvanic current the
dead whose great deeds are known, forces them to arise again, and drags
them dazzled to the light of day, where, in the circle which this fairy
has traced, they re-assume unwillingly their passions of other days, and
begin again in the sight of their descendants the sad drama of life.

ALFRED DE VIGNY.

1827.




CINQ-MARS




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I. THE ADIEU

     Fare thee well! and if forever,
     Still forever fare thee well!

                       LORD BYRON.

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the
garden of France--that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide
streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?

If you have travelled through fair Touraine in summer, you have no doubt
followed with enchantment the peaceful Loire; you have regretted the
impossibility of determining upon which of its banks you would choose to
dwell with your beloved. On its right bank one sees valleys dotted with
white houses surrounded by woods, hills yellow with vines or white
with the blossoms of the cherry-tree, walls covered with honeysuckles,
rose-gardens, from which pointed roofs rise suddenly. Everything reminds
the traveller either of the fertility of the land or of the antiquity
of its monuments; and everything interests him in the work of its busy
inhabitants.

Nothing has proved useless to them; it seems as if in their love for
so beautiful a country--the only province of France never occupied by
foreigners--they have determined not to lose the least part of its soil,
the smallest grain of its sand. Do you fancy that this ruined tower is
inhabited only by hideous night-birds? No; at the sound of your horse’s
hoofs, the smiling face of a young girl peeps out from the ivy, whitened
with the dust from the road. If you climb a hillside covered with vines,
a light column of smoke shows you that there is a chimney at your feet;
for the very rock is inhabited, and families of vine-dressers breathe
in its caverns, sheltered at night by the kindly earth which they
laboriously cultivate during the day. The good people of Touraine are as
simple as their life, gentle as the air they breathe, and strong as the
powerful earth they dig. Their countenances, like their characters,
have something of the frankness of the true people of St. Louis; their
chestnut locks are still long and curve around their ears, as in the
stone statues of our old kings; their language is the purest French,
with neither slowness, haste, nor accent--the cradle of the language is
there, close to the cradle of the monarchy.

But the left bank of the stream has a more serious aspect; in the
distance you see Chambord, which, with its blue domes and little
cupolas, appears like some great city of the Orient; there is
Chanteloup, raising its graceful pagoda in the air. Near these a simpler
building attracts the eyes of the traveller by its magnificent situation
and imposing size; it is the chateau of Chaumont. Built upon the highest
hill of the shore, it frames the broad summit with its lofty walls and
its enormous towers; high slate steeples increase their loftiness, and
give to the building that conventual air, that religious form of all
our old chateaux, which casts an aspect of gravity over the landscape
of most of our provinces. Black and tufted trees surround this ancient
mansion, resembling from afar the plumes that encircled the hat of King
Henry. At the foot of the hill, connected with the chateau by a narrow
path, lies a pretty village, whose white houses seem to have sprung
from the golden sand; a chapel stands halfway up the hill; the lords
descended and the villagers ascended to its altar-the region of
equality, situated like a neutral spot between poverty and riches, which
have been too often opposed to each other in bitter conflict.

Here, one morning in the month of June, 1639, the bell of the chateau
having, as usual, rung at midday, the dinner-hour of the family,
occurrences of an unusual kind were passing in this ancient dwelling.
The numerous domestics observed that in repeating the morning prayers
before the assembled household, the Marechale d’Effiat had spoken with a
broken voice and with tears in her eyes, and that she had appeared in a
deeper mourning than was customary. The people of the household and the
Italians of the Duchesse de Mantua, who had at that time retired for a
while to Chaumont, saw with surprise that sudden preparations were being
made for departure. The old domestic of the Marechal d’Effiat (who had
been dead six months) had taken again to his travelling-boots, which he
had sworn to abandon forever. This brave fellow, named Grandchamp, had
followed the chief of the family everywhere in the wars, and in his
financial work; he had been his equerry in the former, and his secretary
in the latter. He had recently returned from Germany, to inform the
mother and the children of the death of the Marechal, whose last sighs
he had heard at Luzzelstein. He was one of those faithful servants who
are become too rare in France; who suffer with the misfortunes of the
family, and rejoice with their joys; who approve of early marriages,
that they may have young masters to educate; who scold the children and
often the fathers; who risk death for them; who serve without wages in
revolutions; who toil for their support; and who in prosperous times
follow them everywhere, or exclaim at their return, “Behold our
vines!” He had a severe and remarkable face, a coppery complexion, and
silver-gray hair, in which, however, some few locks, black as his heavy
eyebrows, made him appear harsh at first; but a gentle countenance
softened this first impression. At present his voice was loud. He busied
himself much that day in hastening the dinner, and ordered about all the
servants, who were in mourning like himself.

“Come,” said he, “make haste to serve the dinner, while Germain, Louis,
and Etienne saddle their horses; Monsieur Henri and I must be far away
by eight o’clock this evening. And you, gentlemen, Italians, have you
warned your young Princess? I wager that she is gone to read with her
ladies at the end of the park, or on the banks of the lake. She always
comes in after the first course, and makes every one rise from the
table.”

“Ah, my good Grandchamp,” said in a low voice a young maid servant who
was passing, “do not speak of the Duchess; she is very sorrowful, and I
believe that she will remain in her apartment. Santa Maria! what a shame
to travel to-day! to depart on a Friday, the thirteenth of the month,
and the day of Saint Gervais and of Saint-Protais--the day of two
martyrs! I have been telling my beads all the morning for Monsieur
de Cinq-Mars; and I could not help thinking of these things. And my
mistress thinks of them too, although she is a great lady; so you need
not laugh!”

With these words the young Italian glided like a bird across the large
dining-room, and disappeared down a corridor, startled at seeing the
great doors of the salon opened.

Grandchamp had hardly heard what she had said, and seemed to have
been occupied only with the preparations for dinner; he fulfilled the
important duties of major-domo, and cast severe looks at the domestics
to see whether they were all at their posts, placing himself behind the
chair of the eldest son of the house. Then all the inhabitants of the
mansion entered the salon. Eleven persons seated themselves at table.
The Marechale came in last, giving her arm to a handsome old man,
magnificently dressed, whom she placed upon her left hand. She seated
herself in a large gilded arm-chair at the middle of one side of the
table, which was oblong in form. Another seat, rather more ornamented,
was at her right, but it remained empty. The young Marquis d’Effiat,
seated in front of his mother, was to assist her in doing the honors of
the table. He was not more than twenty years old, and his countenance
was insignificant; much gravity and distinguished manners proclaimed,
however, a social nature, but nothing more. His young sister of
fourteen, two gentlemen of the province, three young Italian noblemen of
the suite of Marie de Gonzaga (Duchesse de Mantua), a lady-in-waiting,
the governess of the young daughter of the Marechale, and an abbe of the
neighborhood, old and very deaf, composed the assembly. A seat at the
right of the elder son still remained vacant.

The Marechale, before seating herself, made the sign of the cross,
and repeated the Benedicite aloud; every one responded by making the
complete sign, or upon the breast alone. This custom was preserved
in many families in France up to the Revolution of 1789; some still
practise it, but more in the provinces than in Paris, and not without
some hesitation and some preliminary words upon the weather, accompanied
by a deprecatory smile when a stranger is present--for it is too true
that virtue also has its blush.

The Marechale possessed an imposing figure, and her large blue eyes
were remarkably beautiful. She did not appear to have yet attained her
forty-fifth year; but, oppressed with sorrow, she walked slowly and
spoke with difficulty, closing her eyes, and allowing her head to droop
for a moment upon her breast, after she had been obliged to raise her
voice. At such efforts her hand pressed to her bosom showed that she
experienced sharp pain. She saw therefore with satisfaction that the
person who was seated at her left, having at the beginning engrossed
the conversation, without having been requested by any one to talk,
persisted with an imperturbable coolness in engrossing it to the end of
the dinner. This was the old Marechal de Bassompierre; he had preserved
with his white locks an air of youth and vivacity curious to see. His
noble and polished manners showed a certain gallantry, antiquated like
his costume--for he wore a ruff in the fashion of Henri IV, and the
slashed sleeves fashionable in the former reign, an absurdity which was
unpardonable in the eyes of the beaux of the court. This would not have
appeared more singular than anything else at present; but it is admitted
that in every age we laugh at the costume of our fathers, and, except
the Orientals, I know of no people who have not this fault.

One of the Italian gentlemen had hardly finished asking the Marechal
what he thought of the way in which the Cardinal treated the daughter of
the Duc de Mantua, when he exclaimed, in his familiar language:

“Heavens, man! what are you talking about? what do I comprehend of this
new system under which France is living? We old companions-in-arms
of his late Majesty can ill understand the language spoken by the new
court, and that in its turn does not comprehend ours. But what do I say?
We speak no language in this sad country, for all the world is silent
before the Cardinal; this haughty little, vassal looks upon us as merely
old family portraits, which occasionally he shortens by the head; but
happily the motto always remains. Is it not true, my dear Puy-Laurens?”

This guest was about the same age as the Marechal, but, being more grave
and cautious, he answered in vague and few words, and made a sign to his
contemporary in order to induce him to observe the unpleasant emotions
which he had caused the mistress of the house by reminding her of the
recent death of her husband and in speaking thus of the minister, his
friend. But it was in vain, for Bassompierre, pleased with the sign of
half-approval, emptied at one draught a great goblet of wine--a remedy
which he lauds in his Memoirs as infallible against the plague and
against reserve; and leaning back to receive another glass from his
esquire, he settled himself more firmly than ever upon his chair, and in
his favorite ideas.

“Yes, we are in the way here; I said so the other day to my dear Duc
de Guise, whom they have ruined. They count the minutes that we have to
live, and shake the hour-glass to hasten the descent of its sands. When
Monsieur le Cardinal-Duc observes in a corner three or four of our tall
figures, who never quitted the side of the late King, he feels that he
is unable to move those statues of iron, and that to do it would require
the hand of a great man; he passes quickly by, and dares not meddle with
us, who fear him not. He believes that we are always conspiring; and
they say at this very moment that there is talk of putting me in the
Bastille.”

“Eh! Monsieur le Marechal, why do you delay your departure?” said
the Italian. “I know of no place, except Flanders, where you can find
shelter.”

“Ah, Monsieur! you do not know me. So far from flying, I sought out the
King before his departure, and told him that I did so in order to save
people the trouble of looking for me; and that if I knew when he wished
to send me, I would go myself without being taken. He was as kind as I
expected him to be, and said to me, ‘What, my old friend, could you
have thought that I desired to send you there? You know well that I love
you.’”

“Ah, my dear Marechal, let me compliment you,” said Madame d’Effiat, in
a soft voice. “I recognize the benevolence of the King in these words;
he remembers the affection which the King, his father, had toward you.
It appears to me that he always accorded to you all that you desired for
your friends,” she added, with animation, in order to put him into the
track of praise, and to beguile him from the discontent which he had so
loudly declared.

“Assuredly, Madame,” answered he; “no one is more willing to recognize
his virtues than Francois de Bassompierre. I shall be faithful to him
to the end, because I gave myself, body and fortune, to his father at
a ball; and I swear that, with my consent at least, none of my family
shall ever fail in their duties toward the King of France. Although the
Besteins are foreigners and Lorrains, a shake of the hand from Henri IV
gained us forever. My greatest grief has been to see my brother die in
the service of Spain; and I have just written to my nephew to say that
I shall disinherit him if he has passed over to the Emperor, as report
says he has.”

One of the gentlemen guests who had as yet been silent, and who was
remarkable for the profusion of knots, ribbons, and tags which covered
his dress, and for the black cordon of the Order of St. Michael which
decorated his neck, bowed, observing that it was thus all faithful
subjects ought to speak.

“I’ faith, Monsieur de Launay, you deceive yourself very much,” said
the Marechal, to whom the recollection of his ancestors now occurred;
“persons of our blood are subjects only at our own pleasure, for God has
caused us to be born as much lords of our lands as the King is of his.
When I came to France, I came at my ease, accompanied by my gentlemen
and pages. I perceive, however, that the farther we go, the more we lose
sight of this idea, especially at the court. But here is a young man who
arrives very opportunely to hear me.”

The door indeed opened, and a young man of fine form entered. He was
pale; his hair was brown, his eyes were black, his expression was sad
and reckless. This was Henri d’Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars (a name
taken from an estate of his family). His dress and his short cloak were
black; a collar of lace fell from his neck halfway down his breast; his
stout, small, and very wide-spurred boots made so much noise upon the
flags of the salon that his approach was heard at a distance. He walked
directly toward the Marechale, bowed low, and kissed her hand.

“Well, Henri,” she said, “are your horses ready? At what hour do you
depart?”

“Immediately after dinner, Madame, if you will allow me,” said he to his
mother, with the ceremonious respect of the times; and passing behind
her, he saluted M. de Bassompierre before seating himself at the left of
his eldest brother.

“Well,” said the Marechal, continuing to eat with an excellent appetite,
“you are about to depart, my son; you are going to the court--a slippery
place nowadays. I am sorry for your sake that it is not now what it used
to be. In former times, the court was simply the drawing-room of the
King, in which he received his natural friends: nobles of great family,
his peers, who visited him to show their devotion and their friendship,
lost their money with him, and accompanied him in his pleasure parties,
but never received anything from him, except permission to bring their
vassals with them, to break their heads in his service. The honors a man
of quality received did not enrich him, for he paid for them out of
his purse. I sold an estate for every grade I received; the title of
colonel-general of the Swiss cost me four hundred thousand crowns, and
at the baptism of the present King I had to buy a costume that cost me a
hundred thousand francs.”

“Ah!” said the mistress of the house, smiling, “you must acknowledge
for once that you were not obliged to do that. We have all heard of your
splendid dress of pearls; but I should be much vexed were it still the
custom to wear such.”

“Oh, Madame la Marquise, do not fear, those times of magnificence
never will return. We committed follies, no doubt, but they proved our
independence; it is clear that it would then have been hard to convert
from their allegiance to the King adherents who were attached to him
by love alone, and whose coronets contained as many diamonds as his own
locked-up crown. It is also certain that ambition could not then attack
all classes, since such expenses could come only from rich hands, and
since gold comes only from mines. Those great houses, which are being
so furiously assailed, were not ambitious, and frequently, desiring
no employment from the Government, maintained their places at court by
their own weight, existed upon their own foundation, and might say, as
one of them did say, ‘The Prince condescends not; I am Rohan.’ It was
the same with every noble family, to which its own nobility sufficed;
the King himself expressed it in writing to one of my friends: ‘Money is
not a common thing between gentlemen like you and me.’”

“But, Monsieur le Marechal,” coldly, and with extreme politeness,
interrupted M. de Launay, who perhaps intended to anger him, “this
independence has produced as many civil wars and revolts as those of
Monsieur de Montmorency.”

“Monsieur! I can not consent to hear these things spoken,” said the
fiery Marechal, leaping up in his armchair. “Those revolts and wars had
nothing to do with the fundamental laws of the State, and could no more
have overturned the throne than a duel could have done so. Of all
the great party-chiefs, there was not one who would not have laid his
victory at the feet of the King, had he succeeded, knowing well that all
the other lords who were as great as himself would have abandoned the
enemy of the legitimate sovereign. Arms were taken against a faction,
and not against the sovereign authority; and, this destroyed, everything
went on again in the old way. But what have you done in crushing us?
You have crushed the arm of the throne, and have not put anything in
its place. Yes, I no longer doubt that the Cardinal-Duke will wholly
accomplish his design; the great nobility will leave and lose their
lands, and, ceasing to be great proprietors, they will cease to be a
great power. The court is already no more than a palace where people
beg; by and by it will become an antechamber, when it will be composed
only of those who constitute the suite of the King. Great names will
begin by ennobling vile offices; but, by a terrible reaction, those
offices will end by rendering great names vile. Estranged from their
homes, the nobility will be dependent upon the employments which they
shall have received; and if the people, over whom they will no longer
have any influence, choose to revolt--”

“How gloomy you are to-day, Marechal!” interrupted the Marquise; “I
hope that neither I nor my children will ever see that time. I no longer
perceive your cheerful disposition, now that you talk like a politician.
I expected to hear you give advice to my son. Henri, what troubles you?
You seem very absent.”

Cinq-Mars, with eyes fixed upon the great bay window of the
dining-room, looked sorrowfully upon the magnificent landscape. The sun
shone in full splendor, and colored the sands of the Loire, the trees,
and the lawns with gold and emerald. The sky was azure, the waves were
of a transparent yellow, the islets of a vivid green; behind their
rounded outlines rose the great sails of the merchant-vessels, like a
fleet in ambuscade.

“O Nature, Nature!” he mused; “beautiful Nature, farewell! Soon will my
heart cease to be of simplicity enough to feel your charm, soon you
wall no longer please my eyes. This heart is already burned by a deep
passion; and the mention of the interests of men stirs it with hitherto
unknown agitation. I must, however, enter this labyrinth; I may,
perchance, lose myself there, but for Marie--”

At this moment, aroused by the words of his mother, and fearing to
exhibit a childish regret at leaving his beautiful country and his
family, he said:

“I am thinking, Madame, of the road which I shall take to Perpignan, and
also of that which shall bring me back to you.”

“Do not forget to take that of Poitiers, and to go to Loudun to see your
old tutor, our good Abbe Quillet; he will give you useful advice about
the court. He is on very good terms with the Duc de Bouillon; and
besides, though he may not be very necessary to you, it is a mark of
deference which you owe him.”

“Is it, then, to the siege of Perpignan that you are going, my boy?”
 asked the old Marechal, who began to think that he had been silent a
long time. “Ah! it is well for you. Plague upon it! a siege! ‘tis an
excellent opening. I would have given much had I been able to assist the
late King at a siege, upon my arrival in his court; it would have been
better to be disembowelled then than at a tourney, as I was. But we were
at peace; and I was compelled to go and shoot the Turks with the Rosworm
of the Hungarians, in order that I might not afflict my family by my
idleness. For the rest, may his Majesty receive you as kindly as his
father received me! It is true that the King is good and brave; but they
have unfortunately taught him that cold Spanish etiquette which arrests
all the impulses of the heart. He restrains himself and others by an
immovable presence and an icy look; as for me, I confess that I am
always waiting for the moment of thaw, but in vain. We were accustomed
to other manners from the witty and simple-hearted Henri; and we were at
least free to tell him that we loved him.”

Cinq-Mars, with eyes fixed upon those of Bassompierre, as if to force
himself to attend to his discourse, asked him what was the manner of the
late king in conversation.

“Lively and frank,” said he. “Some time after my arrival in France, I
played with him and with the Duchesse de Beaufort at Fontainebleau; for
he wished, he said, to win my gold-pieces, my fine Portugal money. He
asked me the reason why I came into this country. ‘Truly, Sire,’ said I,
frankly, ‘I came with no intention of enlisting myself in your service,
but only to pass some time at your court, and afterward at that of
Spain; but you have charmed me so much that, instead of going farther,
if you desire my service, I will devote myself to you till death.’ Then
he embraced me, and assured me that I could not find a better master, or
one who would love me more. Alas! I have found it so. And for my part, I
sacrificed everything to him, even my love; and I would have done
more, had it been possible to do more than renounce Mademoiselle de
Montmorency.”

The good Marechal had tears in his eyes; but the young Marquis d’Effiat
and the Italians, looking at one another, could not help smiling to
think that at present the Princesse de Conde was far from young and
pretty. Cinq-Mars noticed this interchange of glances, and smiled also,
but bitterly.

“Is it true then,” he thought, “that the affections meet the same fate
as the fashions, and that the lapse of a few years can throw the same
ridicule upon a costume and upon love? Happy is he who does not outlive
his youth and his illusions, and who carries his treasures with him to
the grave!”

But--again, with effort breaking the melancholy course of his thoughts,
and wishing that the good Marechal should read nothing unpleasant upon
the countenances of his hosts, he said:

“People spoke, then, with much freedom to King Henri? Possibly, however,
he found it necessary to assume that tone at the beginning of his reign;
but when he was master did he change it?”

“Never! no, never, to his last day, did our great King cease to be the
same. He did not blush to be a man, and he spoke to men with force and
sensibility. Ah! I fancy I see him now, embracing the Duc de Guise in
his carriage, on the very day of his death; he had just made one of his
lively pleasantries to me, and the Duke said to him, ‘You are, in
my opinion, one of the most agreeable men in the world, and destiny
ordained us for each other. For, had you been but an ordinary man,
I should have taken you into my service at whatever price; but since
heaven ordained that you should be born a great King, it is inevitable
that I belong to you.’ Oh, great man!” cried Bassompierre, with tears
in his eyes, and perhaps a little excited by the frequent bumpers he had
drunk, “you said well, ‘When you have lost me you will learn my value.’”

During this interlude, the guests at the table had assumed various
attitudes, according to their position in public affairs. One of the
Italians pretended to chat and laugh in a subdued manner with the young
daughter of the Marechale; the other talked to the deaf old Abbe, who,
with one hand behind his ear that he might hear, was the only one
who appeared attentive. Cinq-Mars had sunk back into his melancholy
abstraction, after throwing a glance at the Marechal, as one looks aside
after throwing a tennis-ball until its return; his elder brother did
the honors of the table with the same calm. Puy-Laurens observed
the mistress of the house with attention; he was devoted to the Duc
d’Orleans, and feared the Cardinal. As for the Marechale, she had an
anxious and afflicted air. Careless words had often recalled the death
of her husband or the departure of her son; and, oftener still, she had
feared lest Bassompierre should compromise himself. She had touched him
many times, glancing at the same time toward M. de Launay, of whom she
knew little, and whom she had reason to believe devoted to the prime
minister; but to a man of his character, such warnings were useless.
He appeared not to notice them; but, on the contrary, crushing that
gentleman with his bold glance and the sound of his voice, he affected
to turn himself toward him, and to direct all his conversation to him.
M. de Launay assumed an air of indifference and of assenting politeness,
which he preserved until the moment when the folding-doors opened, and
“Mademoiselle la Duchesse de Mantua” was announced.

The conversation which we have transcribed so lengthily passed, in
reality, with rapidity; and the repast was only half over when the
arrival of Marie de Gonzaga caused the company to rise. She was small,
but very well made, and although her eyes and hair were black, her
complexion was as dazzling as the beauty of her skin. The Marechale
arose to acknowledge her rank, and kissed her on the forehead, in
recognition of her goodness and her charming age.

“We have waited a long time for you to-day, dear Marie,” she said,
placing the Duchess beside her; “fortunately, you remain with me to
replace one of my children, who is about to depart.”

The young Duchess blushed, lowered her head and her eyes, in order that
no one might see their redness, and said, timidly:

“Madame, that may well be, since you have taken toward me the place of
a mother;” and a glance thrown at Cinq-Mars, at the other end of the
table, made him turn pale.

This arrival changed the conversation; it ceased to be general, and each
guest conversed in a low voice with his neighbor. The Marechal alone
continued to utter a few sentences concerning the magnificence of the
old court, his wars in Turkey, the tournaments, and the avarice of the
new court; but, to his great regret, no one made any reply, and the
company were about to leave the table, when, as the clock struck two,
five horses appeared in the courtyard. Four were mounted by servants,
cloaked and armed; the other horse, black and spirited, was held by old
Grandchamp--it was his master’s steed.

“Ah!” exclaimed Bassompierre; “see, our battlehorses are saddled and
bridled. Come, young man, we must say, with our old Marot:

          ‘Adieu la cour, adieu les dames!
          Adieu les filles et les femmes!
          Adieu vous dy pour quelque temps;
          Adieu vos plaisans parse-temps!
          Adieu le bal, adieu la dance;
          Adieu mesure, adieu cadance,
          Tabourins, Hautbois, Violons,
          Puisqu’à la guerre nous allons!’”

These old verses and the air of the Marechal made all the guests laugh,
except three persons.

“Heavens!” he continued, “it seems to me as if, like him, I were only
seventeen years old; he will return to us covered with embroidery.
Madame, we must keep his chair vacant for him.”

The Marechale suddenly grew pale, and left the table in tears; every one
rose with her; she took only two steps, and sank into another chair. Her
sons and her daughter and the young Duchess gathered anxiously around
her, and heard her say, amid the sighs and tears which she strove to
restrain:

“Pardon, my friends! it is foolish of me--childish; but I am weak at
present, and am not mistress of myself. We were thirteen at table; and
you, my dear Duchess, were the cause of it. But it is very wrong of me
to show so much weakness before him. Farewell, my child; give me your
forehead to kiss, and may God conduct you! Be worthy of your name and of
your father.”

Then, as Homer says, “smiling under tears,” she raised herself, pushed
her son from her, and said:

“Come, let me see you on horseback, fair sir!”

The silent traveller kissed the hands of his mother, and made a low bow
to her; he bowed also to the Duchess, without raising his eyes. Then,
embracing his elder brother, pressing the hand of the Marechal, and
kissing the forehead of his young sister almost simultaneously, he went
forth, and was on horseback in an instant. Every one went to the windows
which overlooked the court, except Madame d’Effiat, who was still seated
and suffering.

“He sets off at full gallop. That is a good sign,” said the Marechal,
laughing.

“Oh, heavens!” cried the young Princess, retiring from the bay-window.

“What is the matter?” said the mother.

“Nothing, nothing!” said M. de Launay. “Your son’s horse stumbled under
the gateway; but he soon pulled him up. See, he salutes us from the
road.”

“Another ominous presage!” said the Marquise, upon retiring to her
apartments.

Every one imitated her by being silent or speaking low.

The day was sad, and in the evening the supper was silent at the chateau
of Chaumont.

At ten o’clock that evening, the old Marechal, conducted by his valet,
retired to the northern tower near the gateway, and opposite the river.
The heat was extreme; he opened the window, and, enveloping himself
in his great silk robe, placed a heavy candlestick upon the table and
desired to be left alone. His window looked out upon the plain, which
the moon, in her first quarter, indistinctly lighted; the sky was
charged with thick clouds, and all things disposed the mind to
melancholy. Although Bassompierre had nothing of the dreamer in his
character, the tone which the conversation had taken at dinner returned
to his memory, and he reconsidered his life, the sad changes which the
new reign had wrought in it, a reign which seemed to have breathed
upon him a wind of misfortune--the death of a cherished sister; the
irregularities of the heir of his name; the loss of his lands and of
his favor; the recent fate of his friend, the Marechal d’Effiat,
whose chambers he now occupied. All these thoughts drew from him an
involuntary sigh, and he went to the window to breathe.

At that moment he fancied he heard the tramp of a troop of horse at the
side of the wood; but the wind rising made him think that he had been
mistaken, and, as the noise suddenly ceased, he forgot it. He still
watched for some time all the lights of the chateau, which were
successively extinguished, after winding among the windows of the
staircases and rambling about the courtyards and the stables. Then,
leaning back in his great tapestried armchair, his elbow resting on the
table, he abandoned himself to his reflections. After a while, drawing
from his breast a medallion which hung concealed, suspended by a black
ribbon, he said:

“Come, my good old master, talk with me as you have so often talked;
come, great King, forget your court for the smile of a true friend;
come, great man, consult me concerning ambitious Austria; come,
inconstant chevalier, speak to me of the lightness of thy love, and of
the fidelity of thine inconstancy; come, heroic soldier, complain to me
again that I obscure you in combat. Ah, had I only done it in Paris!
Had I only received thy wound? With thy blood the world has lost the
benefits of thine interrupted reign--”

The tears of the Marechal obscured the glass that covered the large
medallion, and he was effacing them with respectful kisses, when, his
door being roughly opened, he quickly drew his sword.

“Who goes there?” he cried, in his surprise, which was much increased
when he saw M. de Launay, who, hat in hand, advanced toward him, and
said to him, with embarrassment:

“Monsieur, it is with a heart pierced with grief that I am forced to
tell you that the King has commanded me to arrest you. A carriage awaits
you at the gate, attended by thirty of the Cardinal-Duke’s musketeers.”

Bassompierre had not risen: and he still held the medallion in his right
hand, and the sword in the other. He tendered it disdainfully to this
man, saying:

“Monsieur, I know that I have lived too long, and it is that of which
I was thinking; in the name of the great Henri, I restore this sword
peacefully to his son. Follow me.”

He accompanied these words with a look so firm that De Launay was
depressed, and followed him with drooping head, as if he had himself
been arrested by the noble old man, who, seizing a flambeau, issued
from the court and found all the doors opened by horse-guards, who
had terrified the people of the chateau in the name of the King,
and commanded silence. The carriage was ready, and departed rapidly,
followed by many horses. The Marechal, seated beside M. de Launay, was
about to fall asleep, rocked by the movement of the vehicle, when a
voice cried to the driver, “Stop!” and, as he continued, a pistol-shot
followed. The horses stopped.

“I declare, Monsieur, that this is done without my participation,” said
Bassompierre. Then, putting his head out at the door, he saw that they
were in a little wood, and that the road was too narrow to allow the
horses to pass to either the right or the left of the carriage--a great
advantage for the aggressors, since the musketeers could not advance.
He tried to see what was going on when a cavalier, having in his hand a
long sword, with which he parried the strokes of the guard, approached
the door, crying:

“Come, come, Monsieur le Marechal!”

“What! is that you, you madcap, Henri, who are playing these pranks?
Gentlemen, let him alone; he is a mere boy.”

And, as De Launay called to the musketeers to cease, Bassompierre
recognized the cavalier.

“And how the devil came you here?” cried Bassompierre. “I thought you
were at Tours, or even farther, if you had done your duty; but here you
are returned to make a fool of yourself.”

“Truly, it was not for you I returned, but for a secret affair,” said
Cinq-Mars, in a lower tone; “but, as I take it, they are about to
introduce you to the Bastille, and I am sure you will not betray me, for
that delightful edifice is the very Temple of Discretion. Yet had you
thought fit,” he continued, aloud, “I should have released you from
these gentlemen in the wood here, which is so dense that their horses
would not have been able to stir. A peasant informed me of the insult
passed upon us, more than upon you, by this violation of my father’s
house.”

“It is the King’s order, my boy, and we must respect his will; reserve
your ardor for his service, though I thank you with all my heart. Now
farewell, and let me proceed on my agreeable journey.”

De Launay interposed, “I may inform you, Monsieur de Cinq-Mars, that I
have been desired by the King himself to assure Monsieur le Marechal,
that he is deeply afflicted at the step he has found it necessary
to take, and that it is solely from an apprehension that Monsieur le
Marechal may be led into evil that his Majesty requests him to remain
for a few days in the Bastille.”--[He remained there twelve years.]

Bassompierre turned his head toward Cinq-Mars with a hearty laugh. “You
see, my friend, how we young men are placed under guardianship; so take
care of yourself.”

“I will go, then,” said Henri; “this is the last time I shall play the
knight-errant for any one against his will;” and, reentering the wood
as the carriage dashed off at full speed, he proceeded by narrow paths
toward the castle, followed at a short distance by Grandchamp and his
small escort.

On arriving at the foot of the western tower, he reined in his horse. He
did not alight, but, approaching so near the wall that he could rest his
foot upon an abutment, he stood up, and raised the blind of a window
on the ground-floor, made in the form of a portcullis, such as is still
seen on some ancient buildings.

It was now past midnight, and the moon was hidden behind the clouds. No
one but a member of the family could have found his way through darkness
so profound. The towers and the roof formed one dark mass, which stood
out in indistinct relief against the sky, hardly less dark; no light
shone throughout the chateau, wherein all inmates seemed buried in
slumber. Cinq-Mars, enveloped in a large cloak, his face hidden under
the broad brim of his hat, awaited in suspense a reply to his signal.

It came; a soft voice was heard from within:

“Is that you, Monsieur Cinq-Mars?”

“Alas, who else should it be? Who else would return like a criminal to
his paternal house, without entering it, without bidding one more adieu
to his mother? Who else would return to complain of the present, without
a hope for the future, but I?”

The gentle voice replied, but its tones were agitated, and evidently
accompanied with tears: “Alas! Henri, of what do you complain? Have I
not already done more, far more than I ought? It is not my fault, but my
misfortune, that my father was a sovereign prince. Can one choose
one’s birthplace or one’s rank, and say for example, ‘I will be a
shepherdess?’ How unhappy is the lot of princesses! From the cradle,
the sentiments of the heart are prohibited to them; and when they have
advanced beyond childhood, they are ceded like a town, and must not even
weep. Since I have known you, what have I not done to bring my future
life within the reach of happiness, in removing it far from a throne?
For two years I have struggled in vain, at once against my evil fortune,
that separates me from you, and against you, who estrange me from the
duty I owe to my family. I have sought to spread a belief that I was
dead; I have almost longed for revolutions. I should have blessed a
change which deprived me of my rank, as I thanked Heaven when my father
was dethroned; but the court wonders at my absence; the Queen requires
me to attend her. Our dreams are at an end, Henri; we have already
slumbered too long. Let us awake, be courageous, and think no more of
those dear two years--forget all in the one recollection of our great
resolve. Have but one thought; be ambitious for--be ambitious--for my
sake.”

“Must we, then, indeed, forget all, Marie?” murmured Cinq-Mars.

She hesitated.

“Yes, forget all--that I myself have forgotten.” Then, after a moment’s
pause, she continued with earnestness: “Yes, forget our happy days
together, our long evenings, even our walks by the lake and through
the wood; but keep the future ever in mind. Go, Henri; your father was
Marechal. Be you more; be you Constable, Prince. Go; you are young,
noble, rich, brave, beloved--”

“Beloved forever?” said Henri.

“Forever; for life and for eternity.”

Cinq-Mars, tremulously extending his hand to the window, exclaimed:

“I swear, Marie, by the Virgin, whose name you bear, that you shall be
mine, or my head shall fall on the scaffold!”

“Oh, Heaven! what is it you say?” she cried, seizing his hand in her
own. “Swear to me that you will share in no guilty deeds; that you will
never forget that the King of France is your master. Love him above
all, next to her who will sacrifice all for you, who will await you amid
suffering and sorrow. Take this little gold cross and wear it upon your
heart; it has often been wet with my tears, and those tears will flow
still more bitterly if ever you are faithless to the King. Give me the
ring I see on your finger. Oh, heavens, my hand and yours are red with
blood!”

“Oh, only a scratch. Did you hear nothing, an hour ago?”

“No; but listen. Do you hear anything now?”

“No, Marie, nothing but some bird of night on the tower.”

“I heard whispering near us, I am sure. But whence comes this blood?
Tell me, and then depart.”

“Yes, I will go, while the clouds are still dark above us. Farewell,
sweet soul; in my hour of danger I will invoke thee as a guardian angel.
Love has infused the burning poison of ambition into my soul, and
for the first time I feel that ambition may be ennobled by its aim.
Farewell! I go to accomplish my destiny.”

“And forget not mine.”

“Can they ever be separated?”

“Never!” exclaimed Marie, “but by death.”

“I fear absence still more,” said Cinq-Mars.

“Farewell! I tremble; farewell!” repeated the beloved voice, and the
window was slowly drawn down, the clasped hands not parting till the
last moment.

The black horse had all the while been pawing the earth, tossing his
head with impatience, and whinnying. Cinq-Mars, as agitated and restless
as his steed, gave it the rein; and the whole party was soon near the
city of Tours, which the bells of St. Gatien had announced from afar.
To the disappointment of old Grandchamp, Cinq-Mars would not enter the
town, but proceeded on his way, and five days later he entered, with his
escort, the old city of Loudun in Poitou, after an uneventful journey.




CHAPTER II. THE STREET

     Je m’avancais d’un pas pénible et mal assuré vers le but
     de ce convoi tragique.--NODIER, _Smarra_.

The reign of which we are about to paint a few years--a reign of
feebleness, which was like an eclipse of the crown between the splendors
of Henri IV and those of Louis le Grand--afflicts the eyes which
contemplate it with dark stains of blood, and these were not all the
work of one man, but were caused by great and grave bodies. It is
melancholy to observe that in this age, still full of disorder, the
clergy, like a nation, had its populace, as it had its nobility, its
ignorant and its criminal prelates, as well as those who were learned
and virtuous. Since that time, its remnant of barbarism has been refined
away by the long reign of Louis XIV, and its corruptions have been
washed out in the blood of the martyrs whom it offered up to the
revolution of 1793.

We felt it necessary to pause for a moment to express this reflection
before entering upon the recital of the facts presented by the history
of this period, and to intimate that, notwithstanding this consolatory
reflection, we have found it incumbent upon us to pass over many details
too odious to occupy a place in our pages, sighing in spirit at those
guilty acts which it was necessary to record, as in relating the life
of a virtuous old man, we should lament over the impetuosities of his
passionate youth, or over the corrupt tendencies of his riper age.

When the cavalcade entered the narrow streets of Loudun, they heard
strange noises all around them. The streets were filled with agitated
masses; the bells of the church and of the convent were ringing
furiously, as if the town was in flames; and the whole population,
without paying any attention to the travellers, was pressing
tumultuously toward a large edifice that adjoined the church. Here and
there dense crowds were collected, listening in silence to some voice
that seemed raised in exhortation, or engaged in emphatic reading; then,
furious cries, mingled with pious exclamations, arose from the crowd,
which, dispersing, showed the travellers that the orator was some
Capuchin or Franciscan friar, who, holding a wooden crucifix in one
hand, pointed with the other to the large building which was attracting
such universal interest.

“Jesu Maria!” exclaimed an old woman, “who would ever have thought that
the Evil Spirit would choose our old town for his abode?”

“Ay, or that the pious Ursulines should be possessed?” said another.

“They say that the demon who torments the Superior is called Legion,”
 cried a third:

“One demon, say you?” interrupted a nun; “there were seven in her poor
body, whereunto, doubtless, she had attached too much importance, by
reason of its great beauty, though now ‘tis but the receptacle of evil
spirits. The prior of the Carmelites yesterday expelled the demon Eazas
through her mouth; and the reverend Father Lactantius has driven out in
like manner the demon Beherit. But the other five will not depart, and
when the holy exorcists (whom Heaven support!) summoned them in Latin to
withdraw, they replied insolently that they would not go till they
had proved their power, to the conviction even of the Huguenots and
heretics, who, misbelieving wretches! seem to doubt it. The demon Elimi,
the worst of them all, as you know, has threatened to take off Monsieur
de Laubardemont’s skull-cap to-day, and to dangle it in the air at
Miserere.”

“Holy Virgin!” rejoined the first speaker, “I’m all of a tremble! And to
think that many times I have got this magician Urbain to say masses for
me!”

“For myself,” exclaimed a girl, crossing herself; “I too confessed to
him ten months ago! No doubt I should have been possessed myself, but
for the relic of Saint-Genevieve I luckily had about me, and--”

“Luckily, indeed, Martine,” interposed a fat gossip; “for--no
offence!--you, as I remember, were long enough with the handsome
sorcerer.”

“Pshaw!” said a young soldier, who had joined the group, smoking his
pipe, “don’t you know that pretty Martine was dispossessed a month ago.”

The girl blushed, and drew the hood of her black cloak over her face.
The elder gossips cast a glance of indignation at the reckless trooper,
and finding themselves now close to the door of the building, and thus
sure of making their way in among the first when it should be thrown
open, sat down upon the stone bench at the side, and, talking of the
latest wonders, raised the expectations of all as to the delight they
were about to have in being spectators of something marvellous--an
apparition, perhaps, but at the very least, an administration of the
torture.

“Is it true, aunt,” asked Martine of the eldest gossip, “that you have
heard the demons speak?”

“Yes, child, true as I see you; many and many can say the same; and it
was to convince you of it I brought you with me here, that you may see
the power of the Evil One.”

“What kind of voice has he?” continued the girl, glad to encourage
a conversation which diverted from herself the invidious attention
procured her by the soldier’s raillery.

“Oh, he speaks with a voice like that of the Superior herself, to whom
Our Lady be gracious! Poor young woman! I was with her yesterday a long
time; it was sad to see her tearing her breast, turning her arms and her
legs first one way and then another, and then, all of a sudden,
twisting them together behind her back. When the holy Father Lactantius
pronounced the name of Urbain Grandier, foam came out of her mouth, and
she talked Latin for all the world as if she were reading the Bible. Of
course, I did not understand what she said, and all I can remember of it
now is, ‘Urbanus Magicus rosas diabolica,’ which they tell me means
that the magician Urbain had bewitched her with some roses the Devil had
given him; and so it must have been, for while Father Lactantius spoke,
out of her ears and neck came a quantity of flame-colored roses, all
smelling of sulphur so strongly that the judge-Advocate called out for
every one present to stop their noses and eyes, for that the demons were
about to come out.”

“Ah, look there now!” exclaimed with shrill voices and a triumphant air
the whole bevy of assembled women, turning toward the crowd, and more
particularly toward a group of men attired in black, among whom
was standing the young soldier who had cut his joke just before so
unceremoniously.

“Listen to the noisy old idiots!” exclaimed the soldier. “They think
they’re at the witches’ Sabbath, but I don’t see their broomsticks.”

“Young man, young man!” said a citizen, with a sad air, “jest not upon
such subjects in the open air, or, in such a time as this, the wind may
become gushing flames and destroy you.”

“Pooh! I laugh at your exorcists!” returned the soldier; “my name is
Grand-Ferre, and I’ve got here a better exorciser than any of you can
show.”

And significantly grasping the handle of his rapier in one hand, with
the other he twisted up his blond moustache, as he looked fiercely
around; but meeting no glance which returned the defiance of his own, he
slowly withdrew, left foot foremost, and strolled along the dark, narrow
streets with all the reckless nonchalance of a young soldier who has
just donned his uniform, and a profound contempt for all who wear not a
military coat.

In the meantime eight or ten of the more substantial and rational
inhabitants traversed in a body, slowly and silently, the agitated
throng; they seemed overwhelmed with amazement and distress at the
agitation and excitement they witnessed everywhere, and as each new
instance of the popular frenzy appeared, they exchanged glances of
wonder and apprehension. Their mute depression communicated itself to
the working-people, and to the peasants who had flocked in from the
adjacent country, and who, all sought a guide for their opinions in the
faces of the principal townsmen, also for the most part proprietors of
the surrounding districts. They saw that something calamitous was on
foot, and resorted accordingly to the only remedy open to the ignorant
and the beguiled--apathetic resignation.

Yet, in the character of the French peasant is a certain scoffing
finesse of which he makes effective use, sometimes with his equals,
and almost invariably with his superiors. He puts questions to power as
embarrassing as are those which infancy puts to mature age. He affects
excessive humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the
very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness
of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his
real thoughts under the appearance of mere uncouthness; yet, despite
all his self-command, there is something in his air, certain fierce
expressions which betray him to the close observer, who discerns in his
sardonic smile, and in the marked emphasis with which he leans on his
long staff, the hopes that secretly nourish his soul, and the aid upon
which he ultimately relies.

One of the oldest of the peasants whom we have indicated came on
vigorously, followed by ten or twelve young men, his sons and nephews,
all wearing the broad-brimmed hat and the blue frock or blouse of the
ancient Gauls, which the peasants of France still wear over their
other garments, as peculiarly adapted to their humid climate and their
laborious habits.

When the old man had reached the group of personages of whom we have
just spoken, he took off his hat--an example immediately followed by his
whole family--and showed a face tanned with exposure to the weather, a
forehead bald and wrinkled with age, and long, white hair. His shoulders
were bent with years and labor, but he was still a hale and sturdy man.
He was received with an air of welcome, and even of respect, by one
of the gravest of the grave group he had approached, who, without
uncovering, however, extended to him his hand.

“What! good Father Guillaume Leroux!” said he, “and have you, too, left
our farm of La Chenaie to visit the town, when it’s not market-day?
Why, ‘tis as if your oxen were to unharness themselves and go hunting,
leaving their work to see a poor rabbit run down!”

“Faith, Monsieur le Comte du Lude,” replied the farmer, “for that
matter, sometimes the rabbit runs across our path of itself; but, in
truth, I’ve a notion that some of the people here want to make fools of
us, and so I’ve come to see about it.”

“Enough of that, my friend,” returned the Count; “here is Monsieur
Fournier, the Advocate, who assuredly will not deceive you, for he
resigned his office of Attorney-General last night, that he might
henceforth devote his eloquence to the service of his own noble
thoughts. You will hear him, perhaps, to-day, though truly, I dread
his appearing for his own sake as much as I desire it for that of the
accused.”

“I care not for myself,” said Fournier; “truth is with me a passion, and
I would have it taught in all times and all places.”

He that spoke was a young man, whose face, pallid in the extreme, was
full of the noblest expression. His blond hair, his light-blue eyes,
his thinness, the delicacy of his frame, made him at first sight
seem younger than he was; but his thoughtful and earnest countenance
indicated that mental superiority and that precocious maturity of soul
which are developed by deep study in youth, combined with natural energy
of character. He was attired wholly in black, with a short cloak in the
fashion of the day, and carried under his left arm a roll of documents,
which, when speaking, he would take in the right hand and grasp
convulsively, as a warrior in his anger grasps the pommel of his sword.
At one moment it seemed as if he were about to unfurl the scroll, and
from it hurl lightning upon those whom he pursued with looks of fiery
indignation--three Capuchins and a Franciscan, who had just passed.

“Pere Guillaume,” pursued M. du Lude, “how is it you have brought with
you only your sons, and they armed with their staves?”

“Faith, Monsieur, I have no desire that our girls should learn to dance
of the nuns; and, moreover, just now the lads with their staves may
bestir themselves to better purpose than their sisters would.”

“Take my advice, my old friend,” said the Count, “and don’t bestir
yourselves at all; rather stand quietly aside to view the procession
which you see approaching, and remember that you are seventy years old.”

“Ah!” murmured the old man, drawing up his twelve sons in double
military rank, “I fought under good King Henriot, and can play at sword
and pistol as well as the worthy ‘ligueurs’;” and shaking his head he
leaned against a post, his knotty staff between his crossed legs, his
hands clasped on its thick butt-end, and his white, bearded chin
resting on his hands. Then, half closing his eyes, he appeared lost in
recollections of his youth.

The bystanders observed with interest his dress, slashed in the fashion
of Henri IV, and his resemblance to the Bearnese monarch in the latter
years of his life, though the King’s hair had been prevented by the
assassin’s blade from acquiring the whiteness which that of the old
peasant had peacefully attained. A furious pealing of the bells,
however, attracted the general attention to the end of the great
street, down which was seen filing a long procession, whose banners and
glittering pikes rose above the heads of the crowd, which successively
and in silence opened a way for the at once absurd and terrible train.

First, two and two, came a body of archers, with pointed beards and
large plumed hats, armed with long halberds, who, ranging in a single
file on each side of the middle of the street, formed an avenue along
which marched in solemn order a procession of Gray Penitents--men
attired in long, gray robes, the hoods of which entirely covered their
heads; masks of the same stuff terminated below their chins in points,
like beards, each having three holes for the eyes and nose. Even at the
present day we see these costumes at funerals, more especially in the
Pyrenees. The Penitents of Loudun carried enormous wax candles, and
their slow, uniform movement, and their eyes, which seemed to glitter
under their masks, gave them the appearance of phantoms.

The people expressed their various feelings in an undertone:

“There’s many a rascal hidden under those masks,” said a citizen.

“Ay, and with a face uglier than the mask itself,” added a young man.

“They make me afraid,” tremulously exclaimed a girl.

“I’m only afraid for my purse,” said the first speaker.

“Ah, heaven! there are our holy brethren, the Penitents,” cried an old
woman, throwing back her hood, the better to look at them. “See the
banner they bear! Ah, neighbors, ‘tis a joyful thing to have it among
us! Beyond a doubt it will save us; see, it shows the devil in flames,
and a monk fastening a chain round his neck, to keep him in hell. Ah,
here come the judges--noble gentlemen! dear gentlemen! Look at their red
robes; how beautiful! Blessed be the Virgin, they’ve been well chosen!”

“Every man of them is a personal enemy of the Cure,” whispered the Count
du Lude to the advocate Fournier, who took a note of the information.

“Don’t you know them, neighbors?” pursued the shrill, sharp voice of the
old woman, as she elbowed one and pinched another of those near her to
attract their attention to the objects of her admiration; “see, there’s
excellent Monsieur Mignon, whispering to Messieurs the Counsellors of
the Court of Poitiers; Heaven bless them all, say I!”

“Yes, there are Roatin, Richard, and Chevalier--the very men who tried
to have him dismissed a year ago,” continued M. du Lude, in undertones,
to the young advocate, who, surrounded and hidden from public
observation by the group of dark-clad citizens, was writing down his
observations in a note-book under his cloak.

“Here; look, look!” screamed the woman. “Make way! here’s Monsieur
Barre, the Cure of Saint-Jacques at Chinon.”

“A saint!” murmured one bystander.

“A hypocrite!” exclaimed a manly voice.

“See how thin he is with fasting!”

“See how pale he is with remorse!”

“He’s the man to drive away devils!”

“Yes, but not till he’s done with them for his own purposes.”

The dialogue was interrupted by the general exclamation, “How beautiful
she is!”

The Superior of the Ursulines advanced, followed by all her nuns. Her
white veil was raised; in order that the people might see the features
of the possessed ones, it had been ordered that it should be thus with
her and six of the sisterhood. Her attire had no distinguishing feature,
except a large rosary extending from her neck nearly to her feet, from
which hung a gold cross; but the dazzling pallor of her face, rendered
still more conspicuous by the dark hue of her capuchon, at once fixed
the general gaze upon her. Her brilliant, dark eyes, which bore the
impress of some deep and burning passion, were crowned with eyebrows so
perfectly arched that Nature herself seemed to have taken as much pains
to form them as the Circassian women to pencil theirs artistically; but
between them a slight fold revealed the powerful agitation within. In
her movements, however, and throughout her whole bearing, she affected
perfect calm; her steps were slow and measured, and her beautiful hands
were crossed on her bosom, as white and motionless as those of the
marble statues joined in eternal prayer.

“See, aunt,” ejaculated Martine, “see how Sister Agnes and Sister Claire
are weeping, next to the Superior!”

“Ay, niece, they weep because they are the prey of the demon.”

“Or rather,” interposed the same manly voice that spoke before, “because
they repent of having mocked Heaven.”

A deep silence now pervaded the multitude; not a word was heard, not
a movement, hardly a breath. Every one seemed paralyzed by some sudden
enchantment, when, following the nuns, among four Penitents who held him
in chains, appeared the Cure of the Church of Ste. Croix, attired in his
pastor’s robe. His was a noble, fine face, with grandeur in its whole
expression, and gentleness in every feature. Affecting no scornful
indifference to his position, he looked calmly and kindly around, as if
he sought on his dark path the affectionate glances of those who loved
him. Nor did he seek in vain; here and there he encountered those
glances, and joyfully returned them. He even heard sobs, and he saw
hands extended toward him, many of which grasped weapons. But no gesture
of his encouraged these mute offers of aid; he lowered his eyes and went
on, careful not to compromise those who so trusted in him, or to involve
them in his own misfortunes. This was Urbain Grandier.

Suddenly the procession stopped, at a sign from the man who walked
apart, and who seemed to command its progress. He was tall, thin,
sallow; he wore a long black robe, with a cap of the same material
and color; he had the face of a Don Basilio, with the eye of Nero.
He motioned the guards to surround him more closely, when he saw with
affright the dark group we have mentioned, and the strong-limbed and
resolute peasants who seemed in attendance upon them. Then, advancing
somewhat before the Canons and Capuchins who were with him, he
pronounced, in a shrill voice, this singular decree:

   “We, Sieur de Laubardemont, referendary, being delegated and
   invested with discretionary power in the matter of the trial of the
   magician Urbain Grandier, upon the various articles of accusation
   brought against him, assisted by the reverend Fathers Mignon, canon,
   Barre, cure of St. Jacques at Chinon, Father Lactantius, and all the
   other judges appointed to try the said magician, have decreed as
   follows:

   “Primo: the factitious assembly of proprietors, noble citizens of
   this town and its environs, is dissolved, as tending to popular
   sedition; its proceedings are declared null, and its letter to the
   King, against us, the judges, which has been intercepted, shall be
   publicly burned in the marketplace as calumniating the good
   Ursulines and the reverend fathers and judges.

   “Secundo: it is forbidden to say, publicly or in private, that the
   said nuns are not possessed by the Evil Spirit, or to doubt of the
   power of the exorcists, under pain of a fine of twenty thousand
   livres, and corporal punishment.

   “Let the bailiffs and sheriffs obey this. Given the eighteenth of
   June, in the year of grace 1639.”

Before he had well finished reading the decree, the discordant blare of
trumpets, bursting forth at a prearranged signal, drowned, to a
certain extent, the murmurs that followed its proclamation, amid which
Laubardemont urged forward the procession, which entered the great
building already referred to--an ancient convent, whose interior had
crumbled away, its walls now forming one vast hall, well adapted for the
purpose to which it was about to be applied. Laubardemont did not deem
himself safe until he was within the building and had heard the heavy,
double doors creak on their hinges as, closing, they excluded the
furious crowd without.




CHAPTER III. THE GOOD PRIEST

     L’homme de paix me parla ainsi.--VICAIRE SAVOYARD.

Now that the diabolical procession is in the arena destined for its
spectacle, and is arranging its sanguinary representation, let us see
what Cinq-Mars had been doing amid the agitated throng. He was naturally
endowed with great tact, and he felt that it would be no easy matter
for him to attain his object of seeing the Abbe Quillet, at a time when
public excitement was at its height. He therefore remained on horseback
with his four servants in a small, dark street that led into the main
thoroughfare, whence he could see all that passed. No one at first paid
any attention to him; but when public curiosity had no other aliment, he
became an object of general interest. Weary of so many strange scenes,
the inhabitants looked upon him with some exasperation, and whispered to
one another, asking whether this was another exorcist come among them.
Feeling that it was time to take a decided course, he advanced with
his attendants, hat in hand, toward the group in black of whom we
have spoken, and addressing him who appeared its chief member, said,
“Monsieur, where can I find Monsieur l’Abbe Quillet?”

At this name, all regarded him with an air of terror, as if he had
pronounced that of Lucifer. Yet no anger was shown; on the contrary, it
seemed that the question had favorably changed for him the minds of all
who heard him. Moreover, chance had served him well in his choice; the
Comte du Lude came up to his horse, and saluting him, said, “Dismount,
Monsieur, and I will give you some useful information concerning him.”

After speaking a while in whispers, the two gentlemen separated with
all the ceremonious courtesy of the time. Cinq-Mars remounted his black
horse, and passing through numerous narrow streets, was soon out of the
crowd with his retinue.

“How happy I am!” he soliloquized, as he went his way; “I shall, at all
events, for a moment see the good and kind clergyman who brought me
up; even now I recall his features, his calm air, his voice so full of
gentleness.”

As these tender thoughts filled his mind, he found himself in the small,
dark street which had been indicated to him; it was so narrow that the
knee-pieces of his boots touched the wall on each side. At the end of
the street he came to a one-storied wooden house, and in his eagerness
knocked at the door with repeated strokes.

“Who is there?” cried a furious voice within; and at the same moment,
the door opening revealed a little short, fat man, with a very red
face, dressed in black, with a large white ruff, and riding-boots which
engulfed his short legs in their vast depths. In his hands were a pair
of horse-pistols.

“I will sell my life dearly!” he cried; “and--”

“Softly, Abbe, softly,” said his pupil, taking his arm; “we are
friends.”

“Ah, my son, is it you?” said the good man, letting fall his pistols,
which were picked up by a domestic, also armed to the teeth. “What do
you here? The abomination has entered the town, and I only await the
night to depart. Make haste within, my dear boy, with your people. I
took you for the archers of Laubardemont, and, faith, I intended to
take a part somewhat out of my line. You see the horses in the courtyard
there; they will convey me to Italy, where I shall rejoin our friend,
the Duc de Bouillon. Jean! Jean! hasten and close the great gate after
Monsieur’s domestics, and recommend them not to make too much noise,
although for that matter we have no habitation near us.”

Grandchamp obeyed the intrepid little Abbe, who then embraced Cinq-Mars
four consecutive times, raising himself on the points of his boots, so
as to attain the middle of his pupil’s breast. He then hurried him into
a small room, which looked like a deserted granary; and seating him
beside himself upon a black leather trunk, he said, warmly:

“Well, my son, whither go you? How came Madame la Marechale to allow you
to come here? Do you not see what they are doing against an unhappy man,
whose death alone will content them? Alas, merciful Heaven! is this
the first spectacle my dear pupil is to see? And you at that delightful
period of life when friendship, love, confidence, should alone encompass
you; when all around you should give you a favorable opinion of your
species, at your very entry into the great world! How unfortunate! alas,
why did you come?”

When the good Abbe had followed up this lamentation by pressing
affectionately both hands of the young traveller in his own, so red and
wrinkled, the latter answered:

“Can you not guess, my dear Abbe, that I came to Loudun because you
are here? As to the spectacle you speak of, it appears to me simply
ridiculous; and I swear that I do not a whit the less on its account
love that human race of which your virtues and your good lessons have
given me an excellent idea. As to the five or six mad women who--”

“Let us not lose time; I will explain to you all that matter; but answer
me, whither go you, and for what?”

“I am going to Perpignan, where the Cardinal-Duke is to present me to
the King.”

At this the worthy but hasty Abbe rose from his box, and walked, or
rather ran, to and fro, stamping. “The Cardinal! the Cardinal!” he
repeated, almost choking, his face becoming scarlet, and the tears
rising to his eyes; “My poor child! they will destroy him! Ah, mon Dieu!
what part would they have him play there? What would they do with
him? Ah, who will protect thee, my son, in that dangerous place?” he
continued, reseating himself, and again taking his pupil’s hands in his
own with a paternal solicitude, as he endeavored to read his thoughts in
his countenance.

“Why, I do not exactly know,” said Cinq-Mars, looking up at the ceiling;
“but I suppose it will be the Cardinal de Richelieu, who was the friend
of my father.”

“Ah, my dear Henri, you make me tremble; he will ruin you unless you
become his docile instrument. Alas, why can not I go with you? Why must
I act the young man of twenty in this unfortunate affair? Alas, I should
be perilous to you; I must, on the contrary, conceal myself. But you
will have Monsieur de Thou near you, my son, will you not?” said he,
trying to reassure himself; “he was your friend in childhood, though
somewhat older than yourself. Heed his counsels, my child, he is a wise
young man of mature reflection and solid ideas.”

“Oh, yes, my dear Abbe, you may depend upon my tender attachment for
him; I never have ceased to love him.”

“But you have ceased to write to him, have you not?” asked the good
Abbe, half smilingly.

“I beg your pardon, my dear Abbe, I wrote to him once, and again
yesterday, to inform him that the Cardinal has invited me to court.”

“How! has he himself desired your presence?”

Cinq-Mars hereupon showed the letter of the Cardinal-Duke to his mother,
and his old preceptor grew gradually calmer.

“Ah, well!” said he to himself, “this is not so bad, perhaps, after
all. It looks promising; a captain of the guards at twenty--that sounds
well!” and the worthy Abbe’s face became all smiles.

The young man, delighted to see these smiles, which so harmonized with
his own thoughts, fell upon the neck of the Abbe and embraced him, as if
the good man had thus assured to him a futurity of pleasure, glory, and
love.

But the good Abbe, with difficulty disengaging himself from this warm
embrace, resumed his walk, his reflections, and his gravity. He coughed
often and shook his head; and Cinq-Mars, not venturing to pursue the
conversation, watched him, and became sad as he saw him become serious.

The old man at last sat down, and in a mournful tone addressed his
pupil:

“My friend, my son, I have for a moment yielded like a father to your
hopes; but I must tell you, and it is not to afflict you, that they
appear to me excessive and unnatural. If the Cardinal’s sole aim were
to show attachment and gratitude toward your family, he would not have
carried his favors so far; no, the extreme probability is that he has
designs upon you. From what has been told him, he thinks you adapted to
play some part, as yet impossible for us to divine, but which he himself
has traced out in the deepest recesses of his mind. He wishes to educate
you for this; he wishes to drill you into it. Allow me the expression in
consideration of its accuracy, and think seriously of it when the time
shall come. But I am inclined to believe that, as matters are, you would
do well to follow up this vein in the great mine of State; in this way
high fortunes have begun. You must only take heed not to be blinded
and led at will. Let not favors dazzle you, my poor child, and let not
elevation turn your head. Be not so indignant at the suggestion; the
thing has happened to older men than yourself. Write to me often, as
well as to your mother; see Monsieur de Thou, and together we will try
to keep you in good counsel. Now, my son, be kind enough to close that
window through which the wind comes upon my head, and I will tell you
what has been going on here.”

Henri, trusting that the moral part of the discourse was over, and
anticipating nothing in the second part but a narrative more or less
interesting, closed the old casement, festooned with cobwebs, and
resumed his seat without speaking.

“Now that I reflect further,” continued the Abbe, “I think it will
not perhaps be unprofitable for you to have passed through this place,
although it be a sad experience you shall have acquired; but it will
supply what I may not have formerly told you of the wickedness of men.
I hope, moreover, that the result will not be fatal, and that the letter
we have written to the King will arrive in time.”

“I heard that it had been intercepted,” interposed Cinq-Mars.

“Then all is over,” said the Abbe Quillet; “the Cure is lost. But
listen. God forbid, my son, that I, your old tutor, should seek to
assail my own work, and attempt to weaken your faith! Preserve ever and
everywhere that simple creed of which your noble family has given you
the example, which our fathers possessed in a still higher degree than
we, and of which the greatest captains of our time are not ashamed.
Always, while you wear a sword, remember that you hold it for the
service of God. But at the same time, when you are among men, avoid
being deceived by the hypocrite. He will encompass you, my son; he will
assail you on the vulnerable side of your ingenuous heart, in addressing
your religion; and seeing the extravagance of his affected zeal, you
will fancy yourself lukewarm as compared with him. You will think that
your conscience cries out against you; but it will not be the voice of
conscience that you hear. And what cries would not that conscience send
forth, how fiercely would it not rise upon you, did you contribute
to the destruction of innocence by invoking Heaven itself as a false
witness against it?”

“Oh, my father! can such things be possible?” exclaimed Henri d’Effiat,
clasping his hands.

“It is but too true,” continued the Abbe; “you saw a partial execution
of it this morning. God grant you may not witness still greater horrors!
But listen! whatever you may see, whatever crime they dare to commit, I
conjure you, in the name of your mother and of all that you hold
dear, say not a word; make not a gesture that may indicate any opinion
whatever. I know the impetuous character that you derive from
the Marechal, your father; curb it, or you are lost. These little
ebullitions of passion give but slight satisfaction, and bring about
great misfortunes. I have observed you give way to them too much. Oh,
did you but know the advantage that a calm temper gives one over men!
The ancients stamped it on the forehead of the divinity as his finest
attribute, since it shows that he is superior to our fears and to our
hopes, to our pleasures and to our pains. Therefore, my dear child,
remain passive in the scenes you are about to witness; but see them
you must. Be present at this sad trial; for me, I must suffer the
consequences of my schoolboy folly. I will relate it to you; it will
prove to you that with a bald head one may be as much a child as with
your fine chestnut curls.”

And the excellent old Abbe, taking his pupil’s head affectionately
between his hands, continued:

“Like other people, my dear son, I was curious to see the devils of the
Ursulines; and knowing that they professed to speak all languages, I was
so imprudent as to cease speaking Latin and to question them in Greek.
The Superior is very pretty, but she does not know Greek! Duncan, the
physician, observed aloud that it was surprising that the demon, who
knew everything, should commit barbarisms and solecisms in Latin, and
not be able to answer in Greek. The young Superior, who was then upon
her bed, turned toward the wall to weep, and said in an undertone to
Father Barre, ‘I can not go on with this, father.’ I repeated her words
aloud, and infuriated all the exorcists; they cried out that I ought to
know that there are demons more ignorant than peasants, and said that as
to their power and physical strength, it could not be doubted, since the
spirits named Gresil des Trones, Aman des Puissance, and Asmodeus, had
promised to carry off the calotte of Monsieur de Laubardemont. They were
preparing for this, when the physician Duncan, a learned and upright
man, but somewhat of a scoffer, took it into his head to pull a cord he
discovered fastened to a column like a bell-rope, and which hung down
just close to the referendary’s head; whereupon they called him a
Huguenot, and I am satisfied that if Marechal de Breze were not his
protector, it would have gone ill with him. The Comte du Lude then came
forward with his customary ‘sang-froid’, and begged the exorcists to
perform before him. Father Lactantius, the Capuchin with the dark visage
and hard look, proceeded with Sister Agnes and Sister Claire; he raised
both his hands, looking at them as a serpent would look at two dogs, and
cried in a terrible voice, ‘Quis to misit, Diabole?’ and the two sisters
answered, as with one voice, ‘Urbanus.’ He was about to continue, when
Monsieur du Lude, taking out of his pocket, with an air of veneration,
a small gold box, said that he had in it a relic left by his ancestors,
and that though not doubting the fact of the possession, he wished to
test it. Father Lactantius seized the box with delight, and hardly had
he touched the foreheads of the two sisters with it when they made great
leaps and twisted about their hands and feet. Lactantius shouted forth
his exorcisms; Barre threw himself upon his knees with all the old
women; and Mignon and the judges applauded. The impassible Laubardemont
made the sign of the cross, without being struck dead for it! When
Monsieur du Lude took back his box the nuns became still. ‘I think,’
said Lactantius, insolently, ‘that--you will not question your relics
now.’ ‘No more than I do the possession,’ answered Monsieur du Lude,
opening his box and showing that it was empty. ‘Monsieur, you mock us,’
said Lactantius. I was indignant at these mummeries, and said to him,
‘Yes, Monsieur, as you mock God and men.’ And this, my dear friend, is
the reason why you see me in my seven-league boots, so heavy that they
hurt my legs, and with pistols; for our friend Laubardemont has ordered
my person to be seized, and I don’t choose it to be seized, old as it
is.”

“What, is he so powerful, then?” cried Cinq-Mars.

“More so than is supposed--more so than could be believed. I know that
the possessed Abbess is his niece, and that he is provided with an order
in council directing him to judge, without being deterred by any appeals
lodged in Parliament, the Cardinal having prohibited the latter from
taking cognizance of the matter of Urbain Grandier.”

“And what are his offences?” asked the young man, already deeply
interested.

“Those of a strong mind and of a great genius, an inflexible will which
has irritated power against him, and a profound passion which has driven
his heart and him to commit the only mortal sin with which I believe
he can be reproached; and it was only by violating the sanctity of his
private papers, which they tore from Jeanne d’Estievre, his mother, an
old woman of eighty, that they discovered his love for the beautiful
Madeleine de Brou. This girl had refused to marry, and wished to take
the veil. May that veil have concealed from her the spectacle of this
day! The eloquence of Grandier and his angelic beauty drove the women
half mad; they came miles and miles to hear him. I have seen them swoon
during his sermons; they declared him an angel, and touched his garment
and kissed his hands when he descended from the pulpit. It is certain
that, unless it be his beauty, nothing could equal the sublimity of
his discourses, ever full of inspiration. The pure honey of the gospel
combined on his lips with the flashing flame of the prophecies; and one
recognized in the sound of his voice a heart overflowing with holy pity
for the evils to which mankind are subject, and filled with tears, ready
to flow for us.”

The good priest paused, for his own voice and eyes were filled with
tears; his round and naturally Joyous face was more touching than a
graver one under the same circumstances, for it seemed as if it bade
defiance to sadness. Cinq-Mars, even more moved, pressed his hand
without speaking, fearful of interrupting him. The Abbe took out a red
handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and continued:

“This is the second attack upon Urbain by his combined enemies. He
had already been accused of bewitching the nuns; but, examined by holy
prelates, by enlightened magistrates, and learned physicians, he was
immediately acquitted, and the judges indignantly imposed silence upon
these devils in human form. The good and pious Archbishop of Bordeaux,
who had himself chosen the examiners of these pretended exorcists,
drove the prophets away and shut up their hell. But, humiliated by the
publicity of the result, annoyed at seeing Grandier kindly received by
our good King when he threw himself at his feet at Paris, they saw that
if he triumphed they were lost, and would be universally regarded as
impostors. Already the convent of the Ursulines was looked upon only as
a theatre for disgraceful comedies, and the nuns themselves as shameless
actresses. More than a hundred persons, furious against the Cure,
had compromised themselves in the hope of destroying him. Their plot,
instead of being abandoned, has gained strength by its first check; and
here are the means that have been set to work by his implacable enemies.

“Do you know a man called ‘L’Eminence Grise’, that formidable Capuchin
whom the Cardinal employs in all things, consults upon some, and
always despises? It was to him that the Capuchins of Loudun addressed
themselves. A woman of this place, of low birth, named Hamon, having
been so fortunate as to please the Queen when she passed through Loudun,
was taken into her service. You know the hatred that separates her court
from that of the Cardinal; you know that Anne of Austria and Monsieur de
Richelieu have for some time disputed for the King’s favor, and that,
of her two suns, France never knew in the evening which would rise next
morning. During a temporary eclipse of the Cardinal, a satire appeared,
issuing from the planetary system of the Queen; it was called, ‘La
cordonniere de la seine-mere’. Its tone and language were vulgar; but it
contained things so insulting about the birth and person of the Cardinal
that the enemies of the minister took it up and gave it a publicity
which irritated him. It revealed, it is said, many intrigues and
mysteries which he had deemed impenetrable. He read this anonymous
work, and desired to know its author. It was just at this time that
the Capuchins of this town wrote to Father Joseph that a constant
correspondence between Grandier and La Hamon left no doubt in their
minds as to his being the author of this diatribe. It was in vain that
he had previously published religious books, prayers, and meditations,
the style of which alone ought to have absolved him from having put
his hand to a libel written in the language of the marketplace; the
Cardinal, long since prejudiced against Urbain, was determined to fix
upon him as the culprit. He remembered that when he was only prior of
Coussay, Grandier disputed precedence with him and gained it; I fear
this achievement of precedence in life will make poor Grandier precede
the Cardinal in death also.”

A melancholy smile played upon the lips of the good Abbe as he uttered
this involuntary pun.

“What! do you think this matter will go so far as death?”

“Ay, my son, even to death; they have already taken away all the
documents connected with his former absolution that might have served
for his defence, despite the opposition of his poor mother, who
preserved them as her son’s license to live. Even now they affect to
regard a work against the celibacy of priests, found among his papers,
as destined to propagate schism. It is a culpable production, doubtless,
and the love which dictated it, however pure it may be, is an enormous
sin in a man consecrated to God alone; but this poor priest was far from
wishing to encourage heresy, and it was simply, they say, to appease
the remorse of Mademoiselle de Brou that he composed the work. It was so
evident that his real faults would not suffice to condemn him to death
that they have revived the accusation of sorcery, long since disposed
of; but, feigning to believe this, the Cardinal has established a new
tribunal in this town, and has placed Laubardemont at its head, a sure
sign of death. Heaven grant that you never become acquainted with what
the corruption of governments call coups-d’etat!”

At this moment a terrible shriek sounded from beyond the wall of the
courtyard; the Abbe arose in terror, as did Cinq-Mars.

“It is the cry of a woman,” said the old man.

“‘Tis heartrending!” exclaimed Cinq-Mars. “What is it?” he asked his
people, who had all rushed out into the courtyard.

They answered that they heard nothing further.

“Well, well,” said the Abbe, “make no noise.” He then shut the window,
and put his hands before his eyes.

“Ah, what a cry was that, my son!” he said, with his face of an ashy
paleness--“what a cry! It pierced my very soul; some calamity has
happened. Ah, holy Virgin! it has so agitated me that I can talk with
you no more. Why did I hear it, just as I was speaking to you of your
future career? My dear child, may God bless you! Kneel!”

Cinq-Mars did as he was desired, and knew by a kiss upon his head that
he had been blessed by the old man, who then raised him, saying:

“Go, my son, the time is advancing; they might find you with me. Go,
leave your people and horses here; wrap yourself in a cloak, and go; I
have much to write ere the hour when darkness shall allow me to depart
for Italy.”

They embraced once more, promising to write to each other, and Henri
quitted the house. The Abby, still following him with his eyes from the
window, cried:

“Be prudent, whatever may happen,” and sent him with his hands one more
paternal blessing, saying, “Poor child! poor child!”




CHAPTER IV. THE TRIAL

        Oh, vendetta di Dio, quanto to dei
        Esser temuta da ciascun che legge
        Cio, che fu manifesto agli occhi miei.--DANTE.

Notwithstanding the custom of having secret trials, freely countenanced
by Richelieu, the judges of the Cure of Loudun had resolved that the
court should be open to the public; but they soon repented this measure.
They were all interested in the destruction of Urbain Grandier; but
they desired that the indignation of the country should in some degree
sanction the sentence of death they had received orders to pass and to
carry into effect.

Laubardemont was a kind of bird of prey, whom the Cardinal always let
loose when he required a prompt and sure agent for his vengeance; and on
this occasion he fully justified the choice that had been made of him.
He committed but one error--that of allowing a public trial, contrary
to the usual custom; his object had been to intimidate and to dismay. He
dismayed, indeed, but he created also a feeling of indignant horror.

The throng without the gates had waited there two hours, during which
time the sound of hammers indicated that within the great hall they were
hastily completing their mysterious preparations. At length the archers
laboriously turned upon their hinges the heavy gates opening into the
street, and the crowd eagerly rushed in. The young Cinq-Mars was carried
along with the second enormous wave, and, placed behind a thick column,
stood there, so as to be able to see without being seen. He observed
with vexation that the group of dark-clad citizens was near him; but the
great gates, closing, left the part of the court where the people stood
in such darkness that there was no likelihood of his being recognized.
Although it was only midday, the hall was lighted with torches; but they
were nearly all placed at the farther end, where rose the judges’ bench
behind a long table. The chairs, tables, and steps were all covered with
black cloth, and cast a livid hue over the faces of those near them.
A seat reserved for the prisoner was placed upon the left, and on the
crape robe which covered him flames were represented in gold embroidery
to indicate the nature of the offence. Here sat the accused, surrounded
by archers, with his hands still bound in chains, held by two monks,
who, with simulated terror, affected to start from him at his slightest
motion, as if they held a tiger or enraged wolf, or as if the flames
depicted on his robe could communicate themselves to their clothing.
They also carefully kept his face from being seen in the least degree by
the people.

The impassible countenance of M. de Laubardemont was there to dominate
the judges of his choice; almost a head taller than any of them, he
sat upon a seat higher than theirs, and each of his glassy and uneasy
glances seemed to convey a command. He wore a long, full scarlet robe,
and a black cap covered his head; he seemed occupied in arranging
papers, which he then passed to the judges. The accusers, all
ecclesiastics, sat upon the right hand of the judges; they wore their
albs and stoles. Father Lactantius was distinguishable among them by
his simple Capuchin habit, his tonsure, and the extreme hardness of
his features. In a side gallery sat the Bishop of Poitiers, hidden from
view; other galleries were filled with veiled women. Below the bench of
judges a group of men and women, the dregs of the populace, stood behind
six young Ursuline nuns, who seemed full of disgust at their proximity;
these were the witnesses.

The rest of the hall was filled with an enormous crowd, gloomy and
silent, clinging to the arches, the gates, and the beams, and full of
a terror which communicated itself to the judges, for it arose from an
interest in the accused. Numerous archers, armed with long pikes, formed
an appropriate frame for this lugubrious picture.

At a sign from the President, the witnesses withdrew through a narrow
door opened for them by an usher. As the Superior of the Ursulines
passed M. de Laubardemont she was heard to say to him, “You have
deceived me, Monsieur.” He remained immovable, and she went on. A
profound silence reigned throughout the whole assembly.

Rising with all the gravity he could assume, but still with visible
agitation, one of the judges, named Houmain, judge-Advocate of Orleans,
read a sort of indictment in a voice so low and hoarse that it was
impossible to follow it. He made himself heard only when what he had to
say was intended to impose upon the minds of the people. He divided
the evidence into two classes: one, the depositions of seventy-two
witnesses; the other, more convincing, that resulting from “the
exorcisms of the reverend fathers here present,” said he, crossing
himself.

Fathers Lactantius, Barre, and Mignon bowed low, repeating the sacred
sign.

“Yes, my lords,” said Houmain, addressing the judges, “this bouquet of
white roses and this manuscript, signed with the blood of the magician,
a counterpart of the contract he has made with Lucifer, and which he
was obliged to carry about him in order to preserve his power, have
been recognized and brought before you. We read with horror these words
written at the bottom of the parchment: ‘The original is in hell, in
Lucifer’s private cabinet.’”

A roar of laughter, which seemed to come from stentorian lungs, was
heard in the throng. The president reddened, and made a sign to
the archers, who in vain endeavored to discover the disturber. The
judge-Advocate continued:

“The demons have been forced to declare their names by the mouths of
their victims. Their names and deeds are deposited upon this table. They
are called Astaroth, of the order of Seraphim; Eazas, Celsus, Acaos,
Cedron, Asmodeus, of the order of Thrones; Alex, Zebulon, Cham, Uriel,
and Achas, of the order of Principalities, and so on, for their number
is infinite. For their actions, who among us has not been a witness of
them?”

A prolonged murmur arose from the gathering, but, upon some halberdiers
advancing, all became silent.

“We have seen, with grief, the young and respectable Superior of the
Ursulines tear her bosom with her own hands and grovel in the dust;
we have seen the sisters, Agnes, Claire, and others, deviate from the
modesty of their sex by impassioned gestures and unseemly laughter. When
impious men have inclined to doubt the presence of the demons, and we
ourselves felt our convictions shaken, because they refused to answer
to unknown questions in Greek or Arabic, the reverend fathers have, to
establish our belief, deigned to explain to us that the malignity of
evil spirits being extreme, it was not surprising that they should feign
this ignorance in order that they might be less pressed with questions;
and that in their answers they had committed various solecisms and other
grammatical faults in order to bring contempt upon themselves, so that
out of this disdain the holy doctors might leave them in quiet. Their
hatred is so inveterate that just before performing one of their
miraculous feats, they suspended a rope from a beam in order to involve
the reverend personages in a suspicion of fraud, whereas it has been
deposed on oath by credible people that there never had been a cord in
that place.

“But, my lords, while Heaven was thus miraculously explaining itself by
the mouths of its holy interpreters, another light has just been
thrown upon us. At the very time the judges were absorbed in profound
meditation, a loud cry was heard near the hall of council; and upon
going to the spot, we found the body of a young lady of high birth. She
had just exhaled her last breath in the public street, in the arms of
the reverend Father Mignon, Canon; and we learned from the said father
here present, and from several other grave personages, that, suspecting
the young lady to be possessed, by reason of the current rumor for some
time past of the admiration Urbain Grandier had for her, an idea of
testing it happily occurred to the Canon, who suddenly said, approaching
her, ‘Grandier has just been put to death,’ whereat she uttered one loud
scream and fell dead, deprived by the demon of the time necessary for
giving her the assistance of our holy Mother, the Catholic Church.”

A murmur of indignation arose from the crowd, among whom the word
“Assassin” was loudly reechoed; the halberdiers commanded silence with
a loud voice, but it was obtained rather by the judge resuming his
address, the general curiosity triumphing.

“Oh, infamy!” he continued, seeking to fortify himself by exclamations;
“upon her person was found this work, written by the hand of Urbain
Grandier,” and he took from among his papers a book bound in parchment.

“Heavens!” cried Urbain from his seat.

“Look to your prisoner!” cried the judge to the archers who surrounded
him.

“No doubt the demon is about to manifest himself,” said Father
Lactantius, in a sombre voice; “tighten his bonds.” He was obeyed.

The judge-Advocate continued, “Her name was Madeleine de Brou, aged
nineteen.”

“O God! this is too much!” cried the accused, as he fell fainting on the
ground.

The assembly was deeply agitated; for a moment there was an absolute
tumult.

“Poor fellow! he loved her,” said some.

“So good a lady!” cried the women.

Pity began to predominate. Cold water was thrown upon Grandier, without
his being taken from the court, and he was tied to his seat. The
Judge-Advocate went on:

“We are directed to read the beginning of this book to the court,” and
he read as follows:

   “‘It is for thee, dear and gentle Madeleine, in order to set at rest
   thy troubled conscience, that I have described in this book one
   thought of my soul. All those thoughts tend to thee, celestial
   creature, because in thee they return to the aim and object of my
   whole existence; but the thought I send thee, as ‘twere a flower,
   comes from thee, exists only in thee, and returns to thee alone.

   “‘Be not sad because thou lovest me; be not afflicted because I
   adore thee. The angels of heaven, what is it that they do? The
   souls of the blessed, what is it that is promised them? Are we less
   pure than the angels? Are our souls less separated from the earth
   than they will be after death? Oh, Madeleine, what is there in us
   wherewith the Lord can be displeased? Can it be that we pray
   together, that with faces prostrate in the dust before His altars,
   we ask for early death to take us while yet youth and love are ours?
   Or that, musing together beneath the funereal trees of the
   churchyard, we yearned for one grave, smiling at the idea of death,
   and weeping at life? Or that, when thou kneelest before me at the
   tribunal of penitence, and, speaking in the presence of God, canst
   find naught of evil to reveal to me, so wholly have I kept thy soul
   in the pure regions of heaven? What, then, could offend our
   Creator? Perhaps--yes! perhaps some spirit of heaven may have
   envied me my happiness when on Easter morn I saw thee kneeling
   before me, purified by long austerities from the slight stain which
   original sin had left in thee! Beautiful, indeed, wert thou! Thy
   glance sought thy God in heaven, and my trembling hand held His
   image to thy pure lips, which human lip had never dared to breathe
   upon. Angelic being! I alone participated in the secret of the
   Lord, in the one secret of the entire purity of thy soul; I it was
   that united thee to thy Creator, who at that moment descended also
   into my bosom. Ineffable espousals, of which the Eternal himself
   was the priest, you alone were permitted between the virgin and her
   pastor! the sole joy of each was to see eternal happiness beginning
   for the other, to inhale together the perfumes of heaven, to drink
   in already the harmony of the spheres, and to feel assured that our
   souls, unveiled to God and to ourselves alone, were worthy together
   to adore Him.

   “‘What scruple still weighs upon thy soul, O my sister? Dost thou
   think I have offered too high a worship to thy virtue? Fearest thou
   so pure an admiration should deter me from that of the Lord?’”

Houmain had reached this point when the door through which the witnesses
had withdrawn suddenly opened. The judges anxiously whispered together.
Laubardemont, uncertain as to the meaning of this, signed to the fathers
to let him know whether this was some scene executed by their orders;
but, seated at some distance from him, and themselves taken by surprise,
they could not make him understand that they had not prepared this
interruption. Besides, ere they could exchange looks, to the amazement
of the assembly, three women, ‘en chemise’, with naked feet, each with
a cord round her neck and a wax taper in her hand, came through the door
and advanced to the middle of the platform. It was the Superior of the
Ursulines, followed by Sisters Agnes and Claire. Both the latter were
weeping; the Superior was very pale, but her bearing was firm, and her
eyes were fixed and tearless. She knelt; her companions followed
her example. Everything was in such confusion that no one thought of
checking them; and in a clear, firm voice she pronounced these words,
which resounded in every corner of the hall:

“In the name of the Holy Trinity, I, Jeanne de Belfiel, daughter of the
Baron de Cose, I, the unworthy Superior of the Convent of the Ursulines
of Loudun, ask pardon of God and man for the crime I have committed in
accusing the innocent Urbain Grandier. My possession was feigned, my
words were dictated; remorse overwhelms me.”

“Bravo!” cried the spectators, clapping their hands. The judges arose;
the archers, in doubt, looked at the president; he shook in every limb,
but did not change countenance.

“Let all be silent,” he said, in a sharp voice; “archers, do your duty.”

This man felt himself supported by so strong a hand that nothing could
affright him--for no thought of Heaven ever visited him.

“What think you, my fathers?” said he, making a sign to the monks.

“That the demon seeks to save his friend. Obmutesce, Satanas!” cried
Father Lactantius, in a terrible voice, affecting to exorcise the
Superior.

Never did fire applied to gunpowder produce an effect more instantaneous
than did these two words. Jeanne de Belfiel started up in all the beauty
of twenty, which her awful nudity served to augment; she seemed a soul
escaped from hell appearing to, her seducer. With her dark eyes she cast
fierce glances upon the monks; Lactantius lowered his beneath that look.
She took two steps toward him with her bare feet, beneath which the
scaffolding rung, so energetic was her movement; the taper seemed, in
her hand, the sword of the avenging angel.

“Silence, impostor!” she cried, with warmth; “the demon who possessed me
was yourself. You deceived me; you said he was not to be tried. To-day,
for the first time, I know that he is to be tried; to-day, for the first
time, I know that he is to be murdered. And I will speak!”

“Woman, the demon bewilders thee.”

“Say, rather, that repentance enlightens me. Daughters, miserable as
myself, arise; is he not innocent?”

“We swear he is,” said the two young lay sisters, still kneeling and
weeping, for they were not animated with so strong a resolution as that
of the Superior.

Agnes, indeed, had hardly uttered these words when turning toward the
people, she cried, “Help me! they will punish me; they will kill me!”
 And hurrying away her companion, she drew her into the crowd, who
affectionately received them. A thousand voices swore to protect them.
Imprecations arose; the men struck their staves against the floor; the
officials dared not prevent the people from passing the sisters on from
one to another into the street.

During this strange scene the amazed and panic-struck judges whispered;
M. Laubardemont looked at the archers, indicating to them the points
they were especially to watch, among which, more particularly, was that
occupied by the group in black. The accusers looked toward the gallery
of the Bishop of Poitiers, but discovered no expression in his dull
countenance. He was one of those old men of whom death appears to take
possession ten years before all motion entirely ceases in them. His eyes
seemed veiled by a half sleep; his gaping mouth mumbled a few vague
and habitual words of prayer without meaning or application; the entire
amount of intelligence he retained was the ability to distinguish the
man who had most power, and him he obeyed, regardless at what price. He
had accordingly signed the sentence of the doctors of the Sorbonne
which declared the nuns possessed, without even deducing thence the
consequence of the death of Urbain; the rest seemed to him one of those
more or less lengthy ceremonies, to which he paid not the slightest
attention--accustomed as he was to see and live among them, himself an
indispensable part and parcel of them. He therefore gave no sign of life
on this occasion, merely preserving an air at once perfectly noble and
expressionless.

Meanwhile, Father Lactantius, having had a moment to recover from the
sudden attack made upon him, turned toward the president and said:

“Here is a clear proof, sent us by Heaven, of the possession, for the
Superior never before has forgotten the modesty and severity of her
order.”

“Would that all the world were here to see me!” said Jeanne de Belfiel,
firm as ever. “I can not be sufficiently humiliated upon earth, and
Heaven will reject me, for I have been your accomplice.”

Perspiration appeared upon the forehead of Laubardemont, but he tried
to recover his composure. “What absurd tale is this, Sister; what has
influenced you herein?”

The voice of the girl became sepulchral; she collected all her strength,
pressed her hand upon her heart as if she desired to stay its throbbing,
and, looking at Urbain Grandier, answered, “Love.”

A shudder ran through the assembly. Urbain, who since he had fainted had
remained with his head hanging down as if dead, slowly raised his
eyes toward her, and returned entirely to life only to undergo a fresh
sorrow. The young penitent continued:

“Yes, the love which he rejected, which he never fully knew, which
I have breathed in his discourses, which my eyes drew in from his
celestial countenance, which his very counsels against it have
increased.

“Yes, Urbain is pure as an angel, but good as a man who has loved. I
knew not that he had loved! It is you,” she said more energetically,
pointing to Lactantius, Barre, and Mignon, and changing her passionate
accents for those of indignation--“it is you who told me that he loved;
you, who this morning have too cruelly avenged me by killing my rival
with a word. Alas, I only sought to separate them! It was a crime; but,
by my mother, I am an Italian! I burned with love, with jealousy; you
allowed me to see Urbain, to have him as a friend, to see him daily.”
 She was silent for a moment, then exclaimed, “People, he is innocent!
Martyr, pardon me, I embrace thy feet!”

She prostrated herself before Urbain and burst into a torrent of tears.

Urbain raised his closely bound hands, and giving her his benediction,
said, gently:

“Go, Sister; I pardon thee in the name of Him whom I shall soon see. I
have before said to you, and you now see, that the passions work much
evil, unless we seek to turn them toward heaven.”

The blood rose a second time to Laubardemont’s forehead. “Miscreant!” he
exclaimed, “darest thou pronounce the words of the Church?”

“I have not quitted her bosom,” said Urbain.

“Remove the girl,” said the President.

When the archers went to obey, they found that she had tightened the
cord round her neck with such force that she was of a livid hue and
almost lifeless. Fear had driven all the women from the assembly; many
had been carried out fainting, but the hall was no less crowded. The
ranks thickened, for the men out of the streets poured in.

The judges arose in terror, and the president attempted to have the
hall cleared; but the people, putting on their hats, stood in alarming
immobility. The archers were not numerous enough to repel them. It
became necessary to yield; and accordingly Laubardemont in an agitated
voice announced that the council would retire for half an hour. He broke
up the sitting; the people remained gloomily, each man fixed firmly to
his place.




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER V. THE MARTYRDOM

     ‘La torture interroge, et la douleur repond.’
               RAYNOURARD, Les Templiers.

The continuous interest of this half-trial, its preparations, its
interruptions, all had held the minds of the people in such attention
that no private conversations had taken place. Some irrepressible cries
had been uttered, but simultaneously, so that no man could accuse his
neighbor. But when the people were left to themselves, there was an
explosion of clamorous sentences.

There was at this period enough of primitive simplicity among the
lower classes for them to be persuaded by the mysterious tales of the
political agents who were deluding them; so that a large portion of the
throng in the hall of trial, not venturing to change their judgment,
though upon the manifest evidence just given them, awaited in painful
suspense the return of the judges, interchanging with an air of mystery
and inane importance the usual remarks prompted by imbecility on such
occasions.

“One does not know what to think, Monsieur?”

“Truly, Madame, most extraordinary things have happened.”

“We live in strange times!”

“I suspected this; but, i’ faith, it is not wise to say what one
thinks.”

“We shall see what we shall see,” and so on--the unmeaning chatter of
the crowd, which merely serves to show that it is at the command of the
first who chooses to sway it. Stronger words were heard from the group
in black.

“What! shall we let them do as they please, in this manner? What! dare
to burn our letter to the King!”

“If the King knew it!”

“The barbarian impostors! how skilfully is their plot contrived! What!
shall murder be committed under our very eyes? Shall we be afraid of
these archers?”

“No, no, no!” rang out in trumpet-like tones.

Attention was turned toward the young advocate, who, standing on a
branch, began tearing to pieces a roll of paper; then he cried:

“Yes, I tear and scatter to the winds the defence I had prepared for the
accused. They have suppressed discussion; I am not allowed to speak for
him. I can only speak to you, people; I rejoice that I can do so. You
heard these infamous judges. Which of them can hear the truth? Which of
them is worthy to listen to an honest man? Which of them will dare to
meet his gaze? But what do I say? They all know the truth. They carry
it in their guilty breasts; it stings their hearts like a serpent. They
tremble in their lair, where doubtless they are devouring their victim;
they tremble because they have heard the cries of three deluded women.
What was I about to do? I was about to speak in behalf of Urbain
Grandier! But what eloquence could equal that of those unfortunates?
What words could better have shown you his innocence? Heaven has taken
up arms for him in bringing them to repentance and to devotion; Heaven
will finish its work--”

“Vade retro, Satanas,” was heard through a high window in the hall.

Fournier stopped for a moment, then said:

“You hear these voices parodying the divine language? If I mistake not,
these instruments of an infernal power are, by this song, preparing some
new spell.”

“But,” cried those who surrounded him, “what shall we do? What have they
done with him?”

“Remain here; be immovable, be silent,” replied the young advocate. “The
inertia of a people is all-powerful; that is its true wisdom, that its
strength. Observe them closely, and in silence; and you will make them
tremble.”

“They surely will not dare to appear here again,” said the Comte du
Lude.

“I should like to look once more at the tall scoundrel in red,” said
Grand-Ferre, who had lost nothing of what had occurred.

“And that good gentleman, the Cure,” murmured old Father Guillaume
Leroux, looking at all his indignant parishioners, who were talking
together in a low tone, measuring and counting the archers, ridiculing
their dress, and beginning to point them out to the observation of the
other spectators.

Cinq-Mars, still leaning against the pillar behind which he had first
placed himself, still wrapped in his black cloak, eagerly watched all
that passed, lost not a word of what was said, and filled his heart with
hate and bitterness. Violent desires for slaughter and revenge, a vague
desire to strike, took possession of him, despite himself; this is the
first impression which evil produces on the soul of a young man. Later,
sadness takes the place of fury, then indifference and scorn, later
still, a calculating admiration for great villains who have been
successful; but this is only when, of the two elements which constitute
man, earth triumphs over spirit.

Meanwhile, on the right of the hall near the judges’ platform, a group
of women were watching attentively a child about eight years old, who
had taken it into his head to climb up to a cornice by the aid of his
sister Martine, whom we have seen the subject of jest with the young
soldier, Grand-Ferre. The child, having nothing to look at after the
court had left the hall, had climbed to a small window which admitted a
faint light, and which he imagined to contain a swallow’s nest or some
other treasure for a boy; but after he was well established on the
cornice, his hands grasping the bars of an old shrine of Jerome, he
wished himself anywhere else, and cried out:

“Oh, sister, sister, lend me your hand to get down!”

“What do you see there?” asked Martine.

“Oh, I dare not tell; but I want to get down,” and he began to cry.

“Stay there, my child; stay there!” said all the women. “Don’t be
afraid; tell us all that you see.”

“Well, then, they’ve put the Cure between two great boards that squeeze
his legs, and there are cords round the boards.”

“Ah! that is the rack,” said one of the townsmen. “Look again, my little
friend, what do you see now?”

The child, more confident, looked again through the window, and then,
withdrawing his head, said:

“I can not see the Cure now, because all the judges stand round him, and
are looking at him, and their great robes prevent me from seeing. There
are also some Capuchins, stooping down to whisper to him.”

Curiosity attracted more people to the boy’s perch; every one was
silent, waiting anxiously to catch his words, as if their lives depended
on them.

“I see,” he went on, “the executioner driving four little pieces of
wood between the cords, after the Capuchins have blessed the hammer and
nails. Ah, heavens! Sister, how enraged they seem with him, because he
will not speak. Mother! mother! give me your hand, I want to come down!”

Instead of his mother, the child, upon turning round, saw only men’s
faces, looking up at him with a mournful eagerness, and signing him
to go on. He dared not descend, and looked again through the window,
trembling.

“Oh! I see Father Lactantius and Father Barre themselves forcing in more
pieces of wood, which squeeze his legs. Oh, how pale he is! he seems
praying. There, his head falls back, as if he were dying! Oh, take me
away!”

And he fell into the arms of the young Advocate, of M. du Lude, and of
Cinq-Mars, who had come to support him.

“Deus stetit in synagoga deorum: in medio autem Deus dijudicat--”
 chanted strong, nasal voices, issuing from the small window, which
continued in full chorus one of the psalms, interrupted by blows of the
hammer--an infernal deed beating time to celestial songs. One might have
supposed himself near a smithy, except that the blows were dull, and
manifested to the ear that the anvil was a man’s body.

“Silence!” said Fournier, “He speaks. The chanting and the blows stop.”

A weak voice within said, with difficulty, “Oh, my fathers, mitigate the
rigor of your torments, for you will reduce my soul to despair, and I
might seek to destroy myself!”

At this the fury of the people burst forth like an explosion, echoing
along the vaulted roofs; the men sprang fiercely upon the platform,
thrust aside the surprised and hesitating archers; the unarmed crowd
drove them back, pressed them, almost suffocated them against the walls,
and held them fast, then dashed against the doors which led to the
torture chamber, and, making them shake beneath their blows, threatened
to drive them in; imprecations resounded from a thousand menacing voices
and terrified the judges within.

“They are gone; they have taken him away!” cried a man who had climbed
to the little window.

The multitude at once stopped short, and changing the direction of their
steps, fled from this detestable place and spread rapidly through the
streets, where an extraordinary confusion prevailed.

Night had come on during the long sitting, and the rain was pouring in
torrents. The darkness was terrifying. The cries of women slipping on
the pavement or driven back by the horses of the guards; the shouts
of the furious men; the ceaseless tolling of the bells which had been
keeping time with the strokes of the question; the roll of distant
thunder--all combined to increase the disorder.

   [Torture [‘Question’) was regulated in scrupulous detail by Holy
   Mother The Church: The ordinary question was regulated for minor
   infractions and used for interrogating women and children. For more
   serious crimes the suspect (and sometimes the witnesses) were put to
   the extraordinary question by the officiating priests. D.W.]

If the ear was astonished, the eyes were no less so. A few dismal
torches lighted up the corners of the streets; their flickering gleams
showed soldiers, armed and mounted, dashing along, regardless of the
crowd, to assemble in the Place de St. Pierre; tiles were sometimes
thrown at them on their way, but, missing the distant culprit, fell upon
some unoffending neighbor. The confusion was bewildering, and became
still more so, when, hurrying through all the streets toward the Place
de St. Pierre, the people found it barricaded on all sides, and filled
with mounted guards and archers. Carts, fastened to the posts at each
corner, closed each entrance, and sentinels, armed with arquebuses, were
stationed close to the carts. In the centre of the Place rose a pile
composed of enormous beams placed crosswise upon one another, so as
to form a perfect square; these were covered with a whiter and lighter
wood; an enormous stake arose from the centre of the scaffold. A man
clothed in red and holding a lowered torch stood near this sort of mast,
which was visible from a long distance. A huge chafing-dish, covered on
account of the rain, was at his feet.

At this spectacle, terror inspired everywhere a profound silence; for
an instant nothing was heard but the sound of the rain, which fell in
floods, and of the thunder, which came nearer and nearer.

Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars, accompanied by MM. du Lude and Fournier and all
the more important personages of the town, had sought refuge from the
storm under the peristyle of the church of Ste.-Croix, raised upon
twenty stone steps. The pile was in front, and from this height they
could see the whole of the square. The centre was entirely clear, large
streams of water alone traversed it; but all the windows of the houses
were gradually lighted up, and showed the heads of the men and women who
thronged them.

The young D’Effiat sorrowfully contemplated this menacing preparation.
Brought up in sentiments of honor, and far removed from the black
thoughts which hatred and ambition arouse in the heart of man, he could
not conceive that such wrong could be done without some powerful and
secret motive. The audacity of such a condemnation seemed to him so
enormous that its very cruelty began to justify it in his eyes; a secret
horror crept into his soul, the same that silenced the people. He almost
forgot the interest with which the unhappy Urbain had inspired him, in
thinking whether it were not possible that some secret correspondence
with the infernal powers had justly provoked such excessive severity;
and the public revelations of the nuns, and the statement of his
respected tutor, faded from his memory, so powerful is success, even
in the eyes of superior men! so strongly does force impose upon men,
despite the voice of conscience!

The young traveller was asking himself whether it were not probable that
the torture had forced some monstrous confession from the accused, when
the obscurity which surrounded the church suddenly ceased. Its two
great doors were thrown open; and by the light of an infinite number
of flambeaux, appeared all the judges and ecclesiastics, surrounded by
guards. Among them was Urbain, supported, or rather carried, by six men
clothed as Black Penitents--for his limbs, bound with bandages saturated
with blood, seemed broken and incapable of supporting him. It was at
most two hours since Cinq-Mars had seen him, and yet he could hardly
recognize the face he had so closely observed at the trial. All color,
all roundness of form had disappeared from it; a livid pallor covered
a skin yellow and shining like ivory; the blood seemed to have left his
veins; all the life that remained within him shone from his dark eyes,
which appeared to have grown twice as large as before, as he looked
languidly around him; his long, chestnut hair hung loosely down his neck
and over a white shirt, which entirely covered him--or rather a sort
of robe with large sleeves, and of a yellowish tint, with an odor of
sulphur about it; a long, thick cord encircled his neck and fell upon
his breast. He looked like an apparition; but it was the apparition of a
martyr.

Urbain stopped, or, rather, was set down upon the peristyle of the
church; the Capuchin Lactantius placed a lighted torch in his right
hand, and held it there, as he said to him, with his hard inflexibility:

“Do penance, and ask pardon of God for thy crime of magic.”

The unhappy man raised his voice with great difficulty, and with his
eyes to heaven said:

“In the name of the living God, I cite thee, Laubardemont, false judge,
to appear before Him in three years. They have taken away my confessor,
and I have been fain to pour out my sins into the bosom of God Himself,
for my enemies surround me. I call that God of mercy to witness I never
have dealt in magic. I have known no mysteries but those of the Catholic
religion, apostolic and Roman, in which I die; I have sinned much
against myself, but never against God and our Lord--”

“Cease!” cried the Capuchin, affecting to close his mouth ere he could
pronounce the name of the Saviour. “Obdurate wretch, return to the demon
who sent thee!”

He signed to four priests, who, approaching with sprinklers in their
hands, exorcised with holy water the air the magician breathed, the
earth he touched, the wood that was to burn him. During this ceremony,
the judge-Advocate hastily read the decree, dated the 18th of August,
1639, declaring Urbain Grandier duly attainted and convicted of the
crime of sorcery, witchcraft, and possession, in the persons of sundry
Ursuline nuns of Loudun, and others, laymen, etc.

The reader, dazzled by a flash of lightning, stopped for an instant,
and, turning to M. de Laubardemont, asked whether, considering the awful
weather, the execution could not be deferred till the next day.

“The decree,” coldly answered Laubardemont, “commands execution within
twenty-four hours. Fear not the incredulous people; they will soon be
convinced.”

All the most important persons of the town and many strangers were under
the peristyle, and now advanced, Cinq-Mars among them.

“The magician never has been able to pronounce the name of the Saviour,
and repels his image.”

Lactantius at this moment issued from the midst of the Penitents, with
an enormous iron crucifix in his hand, which he seemed to hold with
precaution and respect; he extended it to the lips of the sufferer,
who indeed threw back his head, and collecting all his strength, made
a gesture with his arm, which threw the cross from the hands of the
Capuchin.

“You see,” cried the latter, “he has thrown down the cross!”

A murmur arose, the meaning of which was doubtful.

“Profanation!” cried the priests.

The procession moved toward the pile.

Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars, gliding behind a pillar, had eagerly watched all
that passed; he saw with astonishment that the cross, in falling upon
the steps, which were more exposed to the rain than the platform, smoked
and made a noise like molten lead when thrown into water. While the
public attention was elsewhere engaged, he advanced and touched it
lightly with his bare hand, which was immediately scorched. Seized with
indignation, with all the fury of a true heart, he took up the cross
with the folds of his cloak, stepped up to Laubardemont, and, striking
him with it on the forehead, cried:

“Villain, I brand thee with the mark of this red-hot iron!”

The crowd heard these words and rushed forward.

“Arrest this madman!” cried the unworthy magistrate.

He was himself seized by the hands of men who cried, “Justice! justice,
in the name of the King!”

“We are lost!” said Lactantius; “to the pile, to the pile!”

The Penitents dragged Urbain toward the Place, while the judges and
archers reentered the church, struggling with the furious citizens; the
executioner, having no time to tie up the victim, hastened to lay him
on the wood, and to set fire to it. But the rain still fell in torrents,
and each piece of wood had no sooner caught the flame than it became
extinguished. In vain did Lactantius and the other canons themselves
seek to stir up the fire; nothing could overcome the water which fell
from heaven.

Meanwhile, the tumult which had begun in the peristyle of the church
extended throughout the square. The cry of “Justice!” was repeated
and circulated, with the information of what had been discovered; two
barricades were forced, and despite three volleys of musketry, the
archers were gradually driven back toward the centre of the square. In
vain they spurred their horses against the crowd; it overwhelmed them
with its swelling waves. Half an hour passed in this struggle, the
guards still receding toward the pile, which they concealed as they
pressed closer upon it.

“On! on!” cried a man; “we will deliver him; do not strike the soldiers,
but let them fall back. See, Heaven will not permit him to die! The
fire is out; now, friend, one effort more! That is well! Throw down that
horse! Forward! On!”

The guard was broken and dispersed on all sides. The crowd rushed to
the pile, but no more light was there: all had disappeared, even the
executioner. They tore up and threw aside the beams; one of them
was still burning, and its light showed under a mass of ashes and
ensanguined mire a blackened hand, preserved from the fire by a large
iron bracelet and chain. A woman had the courage to open it; the fingers
clasped a small ivory cross and an image of St. Magdalen.

“These are his remains,” she said, weeping.

“Say, the relics of a martyr!” exclaimed a citizen, baring his head.




CHAPTER VI. THE DREAM

Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars, amid the excitement which his outbreak had
provoked, felt his left arm seized by a hand as hard as iron, which,
drawing him from the crowd to the foot of the steps, pushed him behind
the wall of the church, and he then saw the dark face of old Grandchamp,
who said to him in a sharp voice:

“Sir, your attack upon thirty musketeers in a wood at Chaumont was
nothing, because we were near you, though you knew it not, and,
moreover, you had to do with men of honor; but here ‘tis different. Your
horses and people are at the end of the street; I request you to mount
and leave the town, or to send me back to Madame la Marechale, for I am
responsible for your limbs, which you expose so freely.”

Cinq-Mars was somewhat astonished at this rough mode of having a service
done him, was not sorry to extricate himself thus from the affair,
having had time to reflect how very awkward it might be for him to be
recognized, after striking the head of the judicial authority, the agent
of the very Cardinal who was to present him to the King. He observed
also that around him was assembled a crowd of the lowest class of
people, among whom he blushed to find himself. He therefore followed
his old domestic without argument, and found the other three servants
waiting for him. Despite the rain and wind he mounted, and was soon upon
the highroad with his escort, having put his horse to a gallop to avoid
pursuit.

He had, however, hardly left Loudun when the sandy road, furrowed by
deep ruts completely filled with water, obliged him to slacken his pace.
The rain continued to fall heavily, and his cloak was almost saturated.
He felt a thicker one thrown over his shoulders; it was his old valet,
who had approached him, and thus exhibited toward him a maternal
solicitude.

“Well, Grandchamp,” said Cinq-Mars, “now that we are clear of the riot,
tell me how you came to be there when I had ordered you to remain at the
Abbe’s.”

“Parbleu, Monsieur!” answered the old servant, in a grumbling tone,
“do you suppose that I should obey you any more than I did Monsieur le
Marechal? When my late master, after telling me to remain in his tent,
found me behind him in the cannon’s smoke, he made no complaint, because
he had a fresh horse ready when his own was killed, and he only scolded
me for a moment in his thoughts; but, truly, during the forty years I
served him, I never saw him act as you have in the fortnight I have been
with you. Ah!” he added with a sigh, “things are going strangely; and if
we continue thus, there’s no knowing what will be the end of it.”

“But knowest thou, Grandchamp, that these scoundrels had made the
crucifix red hot?--a thing at which no honest man would have been less
enraged than I.”

“Except Monsieur le Marechal, your father, who would not have done at
all what you have done, Monsieur.”

“What, then, would he have done?”

“He would very quietly have let this cure be burned by the other cures,
and would have said to me, ‘Grandchamp, see that my horses have oats,
and let no one steal them’; or, ‘Grandchamp, take care that the rain
does not rust my sword or wet the priming of my pistols’; for Monsieur
le Marechal thought of everything, and never interfered in what did not
concern him. That was his great principle; and as he was, thank Heaven,
alike good soldier and good general, he was always as careful of his
arms as a recruit, and would not have stood up against thirty young
gallants with a dress rapier.”

Cinq-Mars felt the force of the worthy servitor’s epigrammatic scolding,
and feared that he had followed him beyond the wood of Chaumont; but
he would not ask, lest he should have to give explanations or to tell
a falsehood or to command silence, which would at once have been taking
him into confidence on the subject. As the only alternative, he spurred
his horse and rode ahead of his old domestic; but the latter had not yet
had his say, and instead of keeping behind his master, he rode up to his
left and continued the conversation.

“Do you suppose, Monsieur, that I should allow you to go where you
please? No, Monsieur, I am too deeply impressed with the respect I
owe to Madame la Marquise, to give her an opportunity of saying to me:
‘Grandchamp, my son has been killed with a shot or with a sword; why
were you not before him?’ Or, ‘He has received a stab from the stiletto
of an Italian, because he went at night beneath the window of a great
princess; why did you not seize the assassin?’ This would be very
disagreeable to me, Monsieur, for I never have been reproached with
anything of the kind. Once Monsieur le Marechal lent me to his nephew,
Monsieur le Comte, to make a campaign in the Netherlands, because I know
Spanish. I fulfilled the duty with honor, as I always do. When Monsieur
le Comte received a bullet in his heart, I myself brought back his
horses, his mules, his tent, and all his equipment, without so much as
a pocket-handkerchief being missed; and I can assure you that the horses
were as well dressed and harnessed when we reentered Chaumont as if
Monsieur le Comte had been about to go a-hunting. And, accordingly, I
received nothing but compliments and agreeable things from the whole
family, just in the way I like.”

“Well, well, my friend,” said Henri d’Effiat, “I may some day, perhaps,
have these horses to take back; but in the mean time take this great
purse of gold, which I have well-nigh lost two or three times, and thou
shalt pay for me everywhere. The money wearies me.”

“Monsieur le Marechal did not so, Monsieur. He had been superintendent
of finances, and he counted every farthing he paid out of his own hand.
I do not think your estates would have been in such good condition, or
that you would have had so much money to count yourself, had he done
otherwise; have the goodness, therefore, to keep your purse, whose
contents, I dare swear, you do not know.”

“Faith, not I.”

Grandchamp sent forth a profound sigh at his master’s disdainful
exclamation.

“Ah, Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis! When I think that the
great King Henri, before my eyes, put his chamois gloves into his pocket
to keep the rain from spoiling them; when I think that Monsieur de Rosni
refused him money when he had spent too much; when I think--”

“When thou dost think, thou art egregiously tedious, my old friend,”
 interrupted his master; “and thou wilt do better in telling me what that
black figure is that I think I see walking in the mire behind us.”

“It looks like some poor peasant woman who, perhaps, wants alms of us.
She can easily follow us, for we do not go at much of a pace in this
sand, wherein our horses sink up to the hams. We shall go to the Landes
perhaps some day, Monsieur, and you will see a country all the same as
this sandy road, and great, black firs all the way along. It looks
like a churchyard; this is an exact specimen of it. Look, the rain has
ceased, and we can see a little ahead; there is nothing but furze-bushes
on this great plain, without a village or a house. I don’t know where we
can pass the night; but if you will take my advice, you will let us cut
some boughs and bivouac where we are. You shall see how, with a little
earth, I can make a hut as warm as a bed.”

“I would rather go on to the light I see in the horizon,” said
Cinq-Mars; “for I fancy I feel rather feverish, and I am thirsty. But
fall back, I would ride alone; rejoin the others and follow.”

Grandchamp obeyed; he consoled himself by giving Germain, Louis, and
Etienne lessons in the art of reconnoitring a country by night.

Meanwhile, his young master was overcome with fatigue. The violent
emotions of the day had profoundly affected his mind; and the
long journey on horseback, the last two days passed almost without
nourishment, owing to the hurried pressure of events, the heat of the
sun by day, the icy coldness of the night, all contributed to increase
his indisposition and to weary his delicate frame. For three hours he
rode in silence before his people, yet the light he had seen in the
horizon seemed no nearer; at last he ceased to follow it with his eyes,
and his head, feeling heavier and heavier, sank upon his breast. He
gave the reins to his tired horse, which of its own accord followed the
high-road, and, crossing his arms, allowed himself to be rocked by the
monotonous motion of his fellow-traveller, which frequently stumbled
against the large stones that strewed the road. The rain had ceased, as
had the voices of his domestics, whose horses followed in the track of
their master’s. The young man abandoned himself to the bitterness of his
thoughts; he asked himself whether the bright object of his hopes would
not flee from him day by day, as that phosphoric light fled from him
in the horizon, step by step. Was it probable that the young Princess,
almost forcibly recalled to the gallant court of Anne of Austria, would
always refuse the hands, perhaps royal ones, that would be offered to
her? What chance that she would resign herself to renounce a present
throne, in order to wait till some caprice of fortune should realize
romantic hopes, or take a youth almost in the lowest rank of the army
and lift him to the elevation she spoke of, till the age of love should
be passed? How could he be certain that even the vows of Marie de
Gonzaga were sincere?

“Alas!” he said, “perhaps she has blinded herself as to her own
sentiments; the solitude of the country had prepared her soul to receive
deep impressions. I came; she thought I was he of whom she had dreamed.
Our age and my love did the rest. But when at court, she, the companion
of the Queen, has learned to contemplate from an exalted position the
greatness to which I aspire, and which I as yet see only from a
very humble distance; when she shall suddenly find herself in actual
possession of the future she aims at, and measures with a more correct
eye the long road I have to travel; when she shall hear around her vows
like mine, pronounced by lips which could undo me with a word, with a
word destroy him whom she awaits as her husband, her lord--oh, madman
that I have been!--she will see all her folly, and will be incensed at
mine.”

Thus did doubt, the greatest misery of love, begin to torture his
unhappy heart; he felt his hot blood rush to his head and oppress it.
Ever and anon he fell forward upon the neck of his horse, and a half
sleep weighed down his eyes; the dark firs that bordered the road seemed
to him gigantic corpses travelling beside him. He saw, or thought
he saw, the same woman clothed in black, whom he had pointed out to
Grandchamp, approach so near as to touch his horse’s mane, pull his
cloak, and then run off with a jeering laugh; the sand of the road
seemed to him a river running beneath him, with opposing current, back
toward its source. This strange sight dazzled his worn eyes; he closed
them and fell asleep on his horse.

Presently, he felt himself stopped, but he was numbed with cold and
could not move. He saw peasants, lights, a house, a great room into
which they carried him, a wide bed, whose heavy curtains were closed by
Grandchamp; and he fell asleep again, stunned by the fever that whirred
in his ears.

Dreams that followed one another more rapidly than grains of sand before
the wind rushed through his brain; he could not catch them, and moved
restlessly on his bed. Urbain Grandier on the rack, his mother in tears,
his tutor armed, Bassompierre loaded with chains, passed before him,
making signs of farewell; at last, as he slept, he instinctively put his
hand to his head to stay the passing dream, which then seemed to unfold
itself before his eyes like pictures in shifting sands.

He saw a public square crowded with a foreign people, a northern people,
who uttered cries of joy, but they were savage cries; there was a line
of guards, ferocious soldiers--these were Frenchmen. “Come with me,”
 said the soft voice of Marie de Gonzaga, who took his hand. “See, I wear
a diadem; here is thy throne, come with me.” And she hurried him on, the
people still shouting. He went on, a long way. “Why are you sad, if you
are a queen?” he said, trembling. But she was pale, and smiled and spoke
not. She ascended, step after step, up to a throne, and seated herself.
“Mount!” said she, forcibly pulling his hand. But, at every movement,
the massive stairs crumbled beneath his feet, so that he could not
ascend. “Give thanks to love,” she continued; and her hand, now more
powerful, raised him to the throne. The people still shouted. He bowed
low to kiss that helping hand, that adored hand; it was the hand of the
executioner!

“Oh, heavens!” exclaimed Cinq-Mars, as, heaving a deep sigh, he opened
his eyes. A flickering lamp lighted the ruinous chamber of the inn; he
again closed his eyes, for he had seen, seated on his bed, a woman,
a nun, young and beautiful! He thought he was still dreaming, but she
grasped his hand firmly. He opened his burning eyes, and fixed them upon
her.

“Is it you, Jeannede Belfiel? The rain has drenched your veil and your
black hair! Why are you here, unhappy woman?”

“Hark! awake not my Urbain; he sleeps there in the next room. Ay, my
hair is indeed wet, and my feet--see, my feet that were once so white,
see how the mud has soiled them. But I have made a vow--I will not wash
them till I have seen the King, and until he has granted me Urbain’s
pardon. I am going to the army to find him; I will speak to him as
Grandier taught me to speak, and he will pardon him. And listen, I
will also ask thy pardon, for I read it in thy face that thou, too, art
condemned to death. Poor youth! thou art too young to die, thy curling
hair is beautiful; but yet thou art condemned, for thou hast on thy brow
a line that never deceives. The man thou hast struck will kill thee.
Thou hast made too much use of the cross; it is that which will bring
evil upon thee. Thou hast struck with it, and thou wearest it round
thy neck by a hair chain. Nay, hide not thy face; have I said aught
to afflict thee, or is it that thou lovest, young man? Ah, reassure
thyself, I will not tell all this to thy love. I am mad, but I am
gentle, very gentle; and three days ago I was beautiful. Is she also
beautiful? Ah! she will weep some day! Yet, if she can weep, she will be
happy!”

And then suddenly Jeanne began to recite the service for the dead in a
monotonous voice, but with incredible rapidity, still seated on the bed,
and turning the beads of a long rosary.

Suddenly the door opened; she looked up, and fled through another door
in the partition.

“What the devil’s that-an imp or an angel, saying the funeral service
over you, and you under the clothes, as if you were in a shroud?”

This abrupt exclamation came from the rough voice of Grandchamp, who was
so astonished at what he had seen that he dropped the glass of lemonade
he was bringing in. Finding that his master did not answer, he became
still more alarmed, and raised the bedclothes. Cinq-Mars’s face was
crimson, and he seemed asleep, but his old domestic saw that the blood
rushing to his head had almost suffocated him; and, seizing a jug full
of cold water, he dashed the whole of it in his face. This military
remedy rarely fails to effect its purpose, and Cinq-Mars returned to
himself with a start.

“Ah! it is thou, Grandchamp; what frightful dreams I have had!”

“Peste! Monsieur le Marquis, your dreams, on the contrary, are very
pretty ones. I saw the tail of the last as I came in; your choice is not
bad.”

“What dost mean, blockhead?”

“Nay, not a blockhead, Monsieur; I have good eyes, and I have seen what
I have seen. But, really ill as you are, Monsieur le Marechal would
never--”

“Thou art utterly doting, my friend; give me some drink, I am parched
with thirst. Oh, heavens! what a night! I still see all those women.”

“All those women, Monsieur? Why, how many are here?”

“I am speaking to thee of a dream, blockhead. Why standest there like a
post, instead of giving me some drink?”

“Enough, Monsieur; I will get more lemonade.” And going to the door, he
called over the staircase, “Germain! Etienne! Louis!”

The innkeeper answered from below: “Coming, Monsieur, coming; they have
been helping me to catch the madwoman.”

“What mad-woman?” said Cinq-Mars, rising in bed.

The host entered, and, taking off his cotton cap, said, respectfully:
“Oh, nothing, Monsieur le Marquis, only a madwoman that came here last
night on foot, and whom we put in the next room; but she has escaped,
and we have not been able to catch her.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Cinq-Mars, returning to himself and putting his hand to
his eyes, “it was not a dream, then. And my mother, where is she? and
the Marechal, and--Ah! and yet it is but a fearful dream! Leave me.”

As he said this, he turned toward the wall, and again pulled the clothes
over his head.

The innkeeper, in amazement, touched his forehead three times with his
finger, looking at Grandchamp as if to ask him whether his master were
also mad.

Grandchamp motioned him away in silence, and in order to watch the
rest of the night by the side of Cinq-Mars, who was in a deep sleep, he
seated himself in a large armchair, covered with tapestry, and began to
squeeze lemons into a glass of water with an air as grave and severe as
Archimedes calculating the condensing power of his mirrors.




CHAPTER VII. THE CABINET

   Men have rarely the courage to be wholly good or wholly bad.
                         MACHIAVELLI.

Let us leave our young traveller sleeping; he will soon pursue a long
and beautiful route. Since we are at liberty to turn to all points of
the map, we will fix our eyes upon the city of Narbonne.

Behold the Mediterranean, not far distant, washing with its blue waters
the sandy shores. Penetrate into that city resembling Athens; and to
find him who reigns there, follow that dark and irregular street, mount
the steps of the old archiepiscopal palace, and enter the first and
largest of its apartments.

This was a very long salon, lighted by a series of high lancet windows,
of which the upper part only retained the blue, yellow, and red panes
that shed a mysterious light through the apartment. A large round table
occupied its entire breadth, near the great fireplace; around this
table, covered with a colored cloth and scattered with papers and
portfolios, were seated, bending over their pens, eight secretaries
copying letters which were handed to them from a smaller table. Other
men quietly arranged the completed papers in the shelves of a bookcase,
partly filled with books bound in black.

Notwithstanding the number of persons assembled in the room, one might
have heard the movements of the wings of a fly. The only interruption
to the silence was the sound of pens rapidly gliding over paper, and a
shrill voice dictating, stopping every now and then to cough. This
voice proceeded from a great armchair placed beside the fire, which was
blazing, notwithstanding the heat of the season and of the country. It
was one of those armchairs that you still see in old castles, and which
seem made to read one’s self to sleep in, so easy is every part of it.
The sitter sinks into a circular cushion of down; if the head leans
back, the cheeks rest upon pillows covered with silk, and the seat
juts out so far beyond the elbows that one may believe the provident
upholsterers of our forefathers sought to provide that the book should
make no noise in falling so as to awaken the sleeper.

But we will quit this digression, and speak of the man who occupied
the chair, and who was very far from sleeping. He had a broad forehead,
bordered with thin white hair, large, mild eyes, a wan face, to which
a small, pointed, white beard gave that air of subtlety and finesse
noticeable in all the portraits of the period of Louis XIII. His mouth
was almost without lips, which Lavater deems an indubitable sign of an
evil mind, and it was framed in a pair of slight gray moustaches and a
‘royale’--an ornament then in fashion, which somewhat resembled a comma
in form. The old man wore a close red cap, a large ‘robe-dechambre’, and
purple silk stockings; he was no less a personage than Armand Duplessis,
Cardinal de Richelieu.

Near him, around the small table, sat four youths from fifteen to twenty
years of age; these were pages, or domestics, according to the term then
in use, which signified familiars, friends of the house. This custom
was a relic of feudal patronage, which still existed in our manners. The
younger members of high families received wages from the great lords,
and were devoted to their service in all things, challenging the first
comer at the wish of their patron. The pages wrote letters from the
outline previously given them by the Cardinal, and after their master
had glanced at them, passed them to the secretaries, who made fair
copies. The Duke, for his part, wrote on his knee private notes upon
small slips of paper, inserting them in almost all the packets before
sealing them, which he did with his own hand.

He had been writing a short time, when, in a mirror before him, he saw
the youngest of his pages writing something on a sheet of paper much
smaller than the official sheet. He hastily wrote a few words, and
then slipped the paper under the large sheet which, much against his
inclination, he had to fill; but, seated behind the Cardinal, he hoped
that the difficulty with which the latter turned would prevent him
from seeing the little manoeuvre he had tried to exercise with much
dexterity. Suddenly Richelieu said to him, dryly, “Come here, Monsieur
Olivier.”

These words came like a thunder-clap on the poor boy, who seemed about
sixteen. He rose at once, however, and stood before the minister, his
arms hanging at his side and his head lowered.

The other pages and the secretaries stirred no more than soldiers when
a comrade is struck down by a ball, so accustomed were they to this kind
of summons. The present one, however, was more energetic than usual.

“What were you writing?”

“My lord, what your Eminence dictated.”

“What!”

“My lord, the letter to Don Juan de Braganza.”

“No evasions, Monsieur; you were writing something else.”

“My lord,” said the page, with tears in his eyes, “it was a letter to
one of my cousins.”

“Let me see it.”

The page trembled in every limb and was obliged to lean against the
chimney-piece, as he said, in a hardly audible tone, “It is impossible.”

“Monsieur le Vicomte Olivier d’Entraigues,” said the minister, without
showing the least emotion, “you are no longer in my service.” The page
withdrew. He knew that there was no reply; so, slipping his letter into
his pocket, and opening the folding-doors just wide enough to allow his
exit, he glided out like a bird escaped from the cage.

The minister went on writing the note upon his knee.

The secretaries redoubled their silent zeal, when suddenly the two wings
of the door were thrown back and showed, standing in the opening, a
Capuchin, who, bowing, with his arms crossed over his breast, seemed
waiting for alms or for an order to retire. He had a dark complexion,
and was deeply pitted with smallpox; his eyes, mild, but somewhat
squinting, were almost hidden by his thick eyebrows, which met in the
middle of his forehead; on his mouth played a crafty, mischievous, and
sinister smile; his beard was straight and red, and his costume was that
of the order of St. Francis in all its repulsiveness, with sandals on
his bare feet, that looked altogether unfit to tread upon carpet.

Such as he was, however, this personage appeared to create a great
sensation throughout the room; for, without finishing the phrase, the
line, or even the word begun, every person rose and went out by the door
where he was still standing--some saluting him as they passed, others
turning away their heads, and the young pages holding their fingers to
their noses, but not till they were behind him, for they seemed to have
a secret fear of him. When they had all passed out, he entered, making a
profound reverence, because the door was still open; but, as soon as
it was shut, unceremoniously advancing, he seated himself near the
Cardinal, who, having recognized him by the general movement he created,
saluted him with a dry and silent inclination of the head, regarding
him fixedly, as if awaiting some news and unable to avoid knitting his
brows, as at the aspect of a spider or some other disagreeable creature.

The Cardinal could not resist this movement of displeasure, because
he felt himself obliged, by the presence of his agent, to resume those
profound and painful conversations from which he had for some days
been free, in a country whose pure air, favorable to him, had somewhat
soothed the pain of his malady; that malady had changed to a slow fever,
but its intervals were long enough to enable him to forget during its
absence that it must return. Giving, therefore, a little rest to his
hitherto indefatigable mind, he had been awaiting, for the first time in
his life perhaps, without impatience, the return of the couriers he had
sent in all directions, like the rays of a sun which alone gave life and
movement to France. He had not expected the visit he now received,
and the sight of one of those men, whom, to use his own expression, he
“steeped in crime,” rendered all the habitual disquietudes of his
life more present to him, without entirely dissipating the cloud of
melancholy which at that time obscured his thoughts.

The beginning of his conversation was tinged with the gloomy hue of his
late reveries; but he soon became more animated and vigorous than ever,
when his powerful mind had reentered the real world.

His confidant, seeing that he was expected to break the silence, did so
in this abrupt fashion:

“Well, my lord, of what are you thinking?”

“Alas, Joseph, of what should we all think, but of our future happiness
in a better life? For many days I have been reflecting that human
interests have too much diverted me from this great thought; and I
repent me of having spent some moments of my leisure in profane works,
such as my tragedies, ‘Europe’ and ‘Mirame,’ despite the glory they have
already gained me among our brightest minds--a glory which will extend
unto futurity.”

Father Joseph, full of what he had to say, was at first surprised at
this opening; but he knew his master too well to betray his feelings,
and, well skilled in changing the course of his ideas, replied:

“Yes, their merit is very great, and France will regret that these
immortal works are not followed by similar productions.”

“Yes, my dear Joseph; but it is in vain that such men as Boisrobert,
Claveret, Colletet, Corneille, and, above all, the celebrated Mairet,
have proclaimed these tragedies the finest that the present or any past
age has produced. I reproach myself for them, I swear to you, as for a
mortal sin, and I now, in my hours of repose, occupy myself only with my
‘Methode des Controverses’, and my book on the ‘Perfection du Chretien.’
I remember that I am fifty-six years old, and that I have an incurable
malady.”

“These are calculations which your enemies make as precisely as
your Eminence,” said the priest, who began to be annoyed with this
conversation, and was eager to talk of other matters.

The blood mounted to the Cardinal’s face.

“I know it! I know it well!” he said; “I know all their black villainy,
and I am prepared for it. But what news is there?”

“According to our arrangement, my lord, we have removed Mademoiselle
d’Hautefort, as we removed Mademoiselle de la Fayette before her. So far
it is well; but her place is not filled, and the King--”

“Well!”

“The King has ideas which he never had before.”

“Ha! and which come not from me? ‘Tis well, truly,” said the minister,
with an ironic sneer.

“What, my lord, leave the place of the favorite vacant for six whole
days? It is not prudent; pardon me for saying so.”

“He has ideas--ideas!” repeated Richelieu, with a kind of terror; “and
what are they?”

“He talks of recalling the Queen-mother,” said the Capuchin, in a low
voice; “of recalling her from Cologne.”

“Marie de Medicis!” cried the Cardinal, striking the arms of his chair
with his hands. “No, by Heaven, she shall not again set her foot upon
the soil of France, whence I drove her, step by step! England has not
dared to receive her, exiled by me; Holland fears to be crushed by
her; and my kingdom to receive her! No, no, such an idea could not have
originated with himself! To recall my enemy! to recall his mother! What
perfidy! He would not have dared to think of it.”

Then, having mused for a moment, he added, fixing a penetrating look
still full of burning anger upon Father Joseph:

“But in what terms did he express this desire? Tell me his precise
words.”

“He said publicly; and in the presence of Monsieur: ‘I feel that one of
the first duties of a Christian is to be a good son, and I will resist
no longer the murmurs of my conscience.’”

“Christian! conscience! these are not his expressions. It is Father
Caussin--it is his confessor who is betraying me,” cried the Cardinal.
“Perfidious Jesuit! I pardoned thee thy intrigue with La Fayette; but
I will not pass over thy secret counsels. I will have this confessor
dismissed, Joseph; he is an enemy to the State, I see it clearly. But
I myself have acted with negligence for some days past; I have not
sufficiently hastened the arrival of the young d’Effiat, who will
doubtless succeed. He is handsome and intellectual, they say. What a
blunder! I myself merit disgrace. To leave that fox of a Jesuit with
the King, without having given him my secret instructions, without a
hostage, a pledge, or his fidelity to my orders! What neglect! Joseph,
take a pen, and write what I shall dictate for the other confessor, whom
we will choose better. I think of Father Sirmond.”

Father Joseph sat down at the large table, ready to write, and the
Cardinal dictated to him those duties, of a new kind, which shortly
afterward he dared to have given to the King, who received them,
respected them, and learned them by heart as the commandments of the
Church. They have come down to us, a terrible monument of the empire
that a man may seize upon by means of circumstances, intrigues, and
audacity:

   “I. A prince should have a prime minister, and that minister three
   qualities: (1) He should have no passion but for his prince; (2) He
   should be able and faithful; (3) He should be an ecclesiastic.

   “II. A prince ought perfectly to love his prime minister.

   “III. Ought never to change his prime minister.

   “IV. Ought to tell him all things.

   “V. To give him free access to his person.

   “VI. To give him sovereign authority over his people.

   “VII. Great honors and large possessions.

   “VIII. A prince has no treasure more precious than his prime
   minister.

   “IX. A prince should not put faith in what people say against his
   prime minister, nor listen to any such slanders.

   “X. A prince should reveal to his prime minister all that is said
   against him, even though he has been bound to keep it secret.

   “XI. A prince should prefer not only the well-being of the State,
   but also his prime minister, to all his relations.”

Such were the commandments of the god of France, less astonishing in
themselves than the terrible naivete which made him bequeath them to
posterity, as if posterity also must believe in him.

While he dictated his instructions, reading them from a small piece of
paper, written with his own hand, a deep melancholy seemed to possess
him more and more at each word; and when he had ended, he fell back in
his chair, his arms crossed, and his head sunk on his breast.

Father Joseph, dropping his pen, arose and was inquiring whether he were
ill, when he heard issue from the depths of his chest these mournful and
memorable words:

“What utter weariness! what endless trouble! If the ambitious man
could see me, he would flee to a desert. What is my power? A miserable
reflection of the royal power; and what labors to fix upon my star
that incessantly wavering ray! For twenty years I have been in vain
attempting it. I can not comprehend that man. He dare not flee me; but
they take him from me--he glides through my fingers. What things could
I not have done with his hereditary rights, had I possessed them? But,
employing such infinite calculation in merely keeping one’s balance,
what of genius remains for high enterprises? I hold Europe in my hand,
yet I myself am suspended by a trembling hair. What is it to me that
I can cast my eyes confidently over the map of Europe, when all my
interests are concentrated in his narrow cabinet, and its few feet of
space give me more trouble to govern than the whole country besides?
See, then, what it is to be a prime minister! Envy me, my guards, if you
can.”

His features were so distorted as to give reason to fear some accident;
and at the same moment he was seized with a long and violent fit of
coughing, which ended in a slight hemorrhage. He saw that Father Joseph,
alarmed, was about to seize a gold bell that stood on the table, and,
suddenly rising with all the vivacity of a young man, he stopped him,
saying:

“‘Tis nothing, Joseph; I sometimes yield to these fits of depression;
but they do not last long, and I leave them stronger than before. As for
my health, I know my condition perfectly; but that is not the business
in hand. What have you done at Paris? I am glad to know the King has
arrived in Bearn, as I wished; we shall be able to keep a closer watch
upon him. How did you induce him to come away?”

“A battle at Perpignan.”

“That is not bad. Well, we can arrange it for him; that occupation will
do as well as another just now. But the young Queen, what says she?”

“She is still furious against you; her correspondence discovered, the
questioning to which you had subjected her--”

“Bah! a madrigal and a momentary submission on my part will make her
forget that I have separated her from her house of Austria and from the
country of her Buckingham. But how does she occupy herself?”

“In machinations with Monsieur. But as we have his entire confidence,
here are the daily accounts of their interviews.”

“I shall not trouble myself to read them; while the Duc de Bouillon
remains in Italy I have nothing to fear in that quarter. She may have
as many petty plots with Gaston in the chimney-corner as she pleases; he
never got beyond his excellent intentions, forsooth! He carries nothing
into effect but his withdrawal from the kingdom. He has had his third
dismissal; I will manage a fourth for him whenever he pleases; he is not
worth the pistol-shot you had the Comte de Soissons settled with, and
yet the poor Comte had scarce more energy than he.”

And the Cardinal, reseating himself in his chair, began to laugh gayly
enough for a statesman.

“I always laugh when I think of their expedition to Amiens. They had me
between them, Each had fully five hundred gentlemen with him, armed to
the teeth, and all going to despatch me, like Concini; but the great
Vitry was not there. They very quietly let me talk for an hour with them
about the hunt and the Fete Dieu, and neither of them dared make a sign
to their cut-throats. I have since learned from Chavigny that for two
long months they had been waiting that happy moment. For myself,
indeed, I observed nothing, except that little villain, the Abbe de
Gondi,--[Afterward Cardinal de Retz.]--who prowled near me, and seemed
to have something hidden under his sleeve; it was he that made me get
into the coach.”

“Apropos of the Abbe, my lord, the Queen insists upon making him
coadjutor.”

“She is mad! he will ruin her if she connects herself with him; he’s a
musketeer in canonicals, the devil in a cassock. Read his ‘Histoire de
Fiesque’; you may see himself in it. He will be nothing while I live.”

“How is it that with a judgment like yours you bring another ambitious
man of his age to court?”

“That is an entirely different matter. This young Cinq-Mars, my friend,
will be a mere puppet. He will think of nothing but his ruff and his
shoulder-knots; his handsome figure assures me of this. I know that he
is gentle and weak; it was for this reason I preferred him to his elder
brother. He will do whatever we wish.”

“Ah, my lord,” said the monk, with an expression of doubt, “I never
place much reliance on people whose exterior is so calm; the hidden
flame is often all the more dangerous. Recollect the Marechal d’Effiat,
his father.”

“But I tell you he is a boy, and I shall bring him up; while Gondi is
already an accomplished conspirator, an ambitious knave who sticks at
nothing. He has dared to dispute Madame de la Meilleraie with me. Can
you conceive it? He dispute with me! A petty priestling, who has
no other merit than a little lively small-talk and a cavalier air.
Fortunately, the husband himself took care to get rid of him.”

Father Joseph, who listened with equal impatience to his master when
he spoke of his ‘bonnes fortunes’ or of his verses, made, however, a
grimace which he meant to be very sly and insinuating, but which was
simply ugly and awkward; he fancied that the expression of his mouth,
twisted about like a monkey’s, conveyed, “Ah! who can resist your
Eminence?” But his Eminence only read there, “I am a clown who knows
nothing of the great world”; and, without changing his voice, he
suddenly said, taking up a despatch from the table:

“The Duc de Rohan is dead, that is good news; the Huguenots are ruined.
He is a lucky man. I had him condemned by the Parliament of Toulouse
to be torn in pieces by four horses, and here he dies quietly on the
battlefield of Rheinfeld. But what matters? The result is the same.
Another great head is laid low! How they have fallen since that of
Montmorency! I now see hardly any that do not bow before me. We have
already punished almost all our dupes of Versailles; assuredly they have
nothing with which to reproach me. I simply exercise against them the
law of retaliation, treating them as they would have treated me in the
council of the Queen-mother. The old dotard Bassompierre shall be doomed
for perpetual imprisonment, and so shall the assassin Marechal de
Vitry, for that was the punishment they voted me. As for Marillac, who
counselled death, I reserve death for him at the first false step he
makes, and I beg thee, Joseph, to remind me of him; we must be jus

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/3953