“Ah, Cinq-Mars, Cinq-Mars! where is your confidence? Do you feel no need of it? It is the first condition of a perfect friendship, such as ours ought to be, such as my heart requires.”
The voice of Louis became more affectionate, and the favorite, looking at him over his shoulder, assumed an air less angry, but still simply ennuye, and resigned to listening to him.
“How often have you deceived me!” continued the King; “can I trust myself to you? Are they not fops and gallants whom you meet at the house of this woman? Do not courtesans go there?”
“Heavens! no, Sire; I often go there with one of my friends—a gentleman of Touraine, named Rene Descartes.”
“Descartes! I know that name! Yes, he is an officer who distinguished himself at the siege of Rochelle, and who dabbles in writing; he has a good reputation for piety, but he is connected with Desbarreaux, who is a free-thinker. I am sure that you must mix with many persons who are not fit company for you, many young men without family, without birth. Come, tell me whom saw you last there?”
“Truly, I can scarcely remember their names,” said Cinq-Mars, looking at the ceiling; “sometimes I do not even ask them. There was, in the first place, a certain Monsieur—Monsieur Groot, or Grotius, a Hollander.”
“I know him, a friend of Barnevelt; I pay him a pension. I liked him well enough; but the Card—but I was told that he was a high Calvinist.”
“I also saw an Englishman, named John Milton; he is a young man just come from Italy, and is returning to London. He scarcely speaks at all.”
“I don’t know him—not at all; but I’m sure he’s some other Calvinist. And the Frenchmen, who were they?”
“The young man who wrote Cinna, and who has been thrice rejected at the Academie Francaise; he was angry that Du Royer occupied his place there. He is called Corneille.”