The King gazed at her awestruck. "Dispose of me as you will," murmured he; "command my life—but, remember that now I have lost you, happiness is gone from me for ever!"
"Adieu, Sire," said Mademoiselle de Lafayette. "The hour-glass warns me that our interview is over. Return in six months and tell that I have been obeyed."
She drew the dark curtain across the bars, and the Abbess entered. Louis returned hastily to Saint-Germain.
CHAPTER V.
MONSIEUR LE GRAND.
IN the broad valley of the Loire, between Tours and Saumur, the train stops at the small station of Cinq-Mars. This station lies beside the Loire, which glides by in a current so broad and majestic, as to suggest a series of huge lakes, with banks bordered by sand and scrub, rather than a river. On either side of the Loire run ranges of low hills, their glassy surface gashed and scored by many a rent revealing the chalky soil beneath, their summits fringed with scanty underwood, and dotted with groups of gnarled and knotted oaks and ragged fir-trees, the rough roots clasping cairns of rock and blocks of limestone. In the dimples of these low hills lie snugly sheltered villas, each within its own garden and policy. These villas thicken as the small township of Cinq-Mars is approached,—a nest of bright little houses, gay streets, and tall chimneys telling of provincial commerce, all clustered beneath chalky cliffs which rise abruptly behind, rent by many a dark fissure and blackened watercourse. Aloft, on a grassy marge, where many an old tree bends its scathed trunk to the prevailing wind, among bushes and piled-up heaps of stones, rise the ruins of a feudal castle. Two gate towers support an arch, through which the blue sky peeps, and some low, broken walls, without form and void, skirt the summit of the cliff. This ruin, absolutely pathetic in its desolate loneliness, is all that remains of the ancestral castle of the Cöiffiers de Cinq-Mars, Marquis d'Effiat. From this hearth and from these shattered walls, now raised "to the height of infamy," sprung that handsome, shallow, ambitious coxcomb, known as the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, who succeeded Mademoiselle de Lafayette in the favour of Louis XIII.
Deprived of Louise de Lafayette, the King's spirits languished. In spite of his partial reconciliation with Anne of Austria, and the birth of a son, he was sullen and gloomy, spoke to no one, and desired no one to speak to him. When etiquette required his presence in the Queen's apartments, he seated himself in a corner, yawned, and fell asleep. The internal malady of which he died had already undermined his always feeble frame. His condition was altogether so critical, that the Cardinal looked round for a companion to solace his weariness. Henri de Cinq-Mars had lately come up to Paris from Touraine. In years he was a boy, under twenty. He was gentle, adroit, and amusing, but weak, and the Cardinal believed he had found in him the facile instrument he sought.
Cinq-Mars was presented to the King. Louis was at once prepossessed by his handsome person and distinguished manners. Cinq-Mars, accustomed from infancy to field sports and country life, angling in the deep currents of the Loire and the Indre, hunting wild boars and deer in the dense forests of Azay and of Chanteloup, or flying his gear-falcon from the summits of his native downs, struck a sympathetic chord in the sad King's heart. One honour after the other was heaped upon him; finally he was made Grand Seneschal of France and Master of the Horse. From this time he dropped the patronymic of "Cinq-Mars," and was known at Court as "Monsieur le Grand," one of the greatest personages in France. For a time all went smoothly. King and minister smiled upon the petulant stripling, whose witty sallies and boyish audacity were tempered by the highest breeding. He was always present when the Cardinal conferred with the King, and from the first gave his opinion with much more freedom than altogether pleased the minister, who simply intended him for a puppet, not for an adviser. When the Cardinal remonstrated, Cinq-Mars shook his scented curls, pulled his lace ruffles, talked of loyalty and gratitude to the King, and of personal independence, in a manner the Cardinal deemed highly unbecoming and inconvenient. Monsieur le Grand cared little for what the Cardinal thought, and did not take the trouble to hide this opinion. He cared neither for the terrible minister nor for the eccentric Louis, whom he often treated, even in public, with contempt. It was the old story. Confident in favour, arrogant in power, he made enemies every day.