night-rounds. Nothing was
to be heard but the gloomy and prolonged cries of its guards, who warned
one another not to sleep.

It was only around the King that all things waked, but at a great
distance from him. This Prince had dismissed all his suite; he walked
alone before his tent, and, pausing sometimes to contemplate the beauty
of the heavens, he appeared plunged in melancholy meditation. No one
dared to interrupt him; and those of the nobility who had remained in
the royal quarters had gathered about the Cardinal, who, at twenty paces
from the King, was seated upon a little hillock of turf, fashioned into
a seat by the soldiers. There he wiped his pale forehead, fatigued
with the cares of the day and with the unaccustomed weight of a suit of
armor; he bade adieu, in a few hurried but always attentive and polite
words, to those who came to salute him as they retired. No one was near
him now except Joseph, who was talking with Laubardemont. The Cardinal
was looking at the King, to see whether, before reentering, this Prince
would not speak to him, when the sound of the horses of Cinq-Mars was
heard. The Cardinal's guards questioned him, and allowed him to advance
without followers, and only with De Thou.

"You are come too late, young man, to speak with the King," said the
Cardinal-Duke with a sharp voice. "One can not make his Majesty wait."

The two friends were about to retire, when the voice of Louis XIII
himself made itself heard. This Prince was at that moment in one of
those false positions which constituted the misfortune of his whole
life. Profoundly irritated against his minister, but not concealing from
himself that he owed the success of the day to him, desiring, moreover,
to announce to him his intention to quit the army and to raise the siege
of Perpignan, he was torn between the desire of speaking to the Cardinal
and the fear lest his anger might be weakened. The minister, upon
his part, dared not be the first to speak, being uncertain as to the
thoughts which occupied his master, and fearing to choose his time
ill, but yet not able to decide upon retiring. Both found themselves
precisely in the position of two lovers who have quarrelled and desire
to have an explanation, when the King, seized with joy the first
opportunity of extricating himself. The chance was fatal to the
minister. See upon what trifles depend those destinies which are called
great.

"Is it not Monsieur de Cinq-Mars?" said the