my whole heart is penetrated."

"Ah, Cinq-Mars, I no longer recognize you! how different you were
formerly! I do not conceal from you that you appear to me to have
degenerated. In those walks of our childhood, when the life, and, above
all, the death of Socrates, caused tears of admiration and envy to
flow from our eyes; when, raising ourselves to the ideal of the
highest virtue, we wished that those illustrious sorrows, those sublime
misfortunes, which create great men, might in the future come upon us;
when we constructed for ourselves imaginary occasions of sacrifices
and devotion--if the voice of a man had pronounced, between us two, the
single world, 'ambition,' we should have believed that we were touching
a serpent."

De Thou spoke with the heat of enthusiasm and of reproach. Cinq-Mars
went on without answering, and still with his face in his hands. After
an instant of silence he removed them, and allowed his eyes to be seen,
full of generous tears. He pressed the hand of his friend warmly, and
said to him, with a penetrating accent:

"Monsieur de Thou, you have recalled to me the most beautiful thoughts
of my earliest youth. Do not believe that I have fallen; I am consumed
by a secret hope which I can not confide even to you. I despise, as much
as you, the ambition which will seem to possess me. All the world will
believe in it; but what do I care for the world? As for you, noble
friend, promise me that you will not cease to esteem me, whatever you
may see me do. I swear that my thoughts are as pure as heaven itself!"

"Well," said De Thou, "I swear by heaven that I believe you blindly; you
give me back my life!"

They shook hands again with effusion of heart, and then perceived that
they had arrived almost before the tent of the King.

Day was nearly over; but one might have believed that a softer day
was rising, for the moon issued from the sea in all her splendor. The
transparent sky of the south showed not a single cloud, and it seemed
like a veil of pale blue sown with silver spangles; the air, still hot,
was agitated only by the rare passage of breezes from the Mediterranean;
and all sounds had ceased upon the earth. The fatigued army reposed
beneath their tents, the line of which was marked by the fires, and the
besieged city seemed oppressed by the same slumber; upon its ramparts
nothing was to be seen but the arms of the sentinels, which shone in the
rays of the moon, or the wandering fire of the