There was an agitated movement on the part of the Abbe.
Marie exclaimed, “I foresaw it; this is the misfortune I dreamed and dreamed of! It is I who caused it?”
“He deceived me, as he pressed my hand,” continued Cinq-Mars; “he betrayed me by the villain Joseph, whom an offer has been made to me to poniard.”
The Abbe gave a start of horror which half opened the door of the confessional.
“O father, fear nothing,” said Henri d’Effiat; “your pupil will never strike such blows. Those I prepare will be heard from afar, and the broad day will light them up; but there remains a duty—a sacred duty—for me to fulfil. Behold your son sacrifice himself before you! Alas! I have not lived long in the sight of happiness, and I am about, perhaps, to destroy it by your hand, that consecrated it.”
As he spoke, he opened the light grating which separated him from his old tutor; the latter, still observing an extraordinary silence, passed his hood over his forehead.
“Restore this nuptial ring to the Duchesse de Mantua,” said Cinq-Mars, in a tone less firm; “I can not keep it unless she give it me a second time, for I am not the same whom she promised to espouse.”
The priest hastily seized the ring, and passed it through the opposite grating; this mark of indifference astonished Cinq-Mars.
“What! Father,” he said, “are you also changed?”
Marie wept no longer; but, raising her angelic voice, which awakened a faint echo along the aisles of the church, as the softest sigh of the organ, she said, returning the ring to Cinq-Mars: