e endure the imperious chidings
of the Cardinal, who could not brook that one who owed his advancement
to his favour should seek to emancipate himself from his control; and
the spoiled child of fortune, when he occasionally passed from the
perfumed boudoir of some haughty Court beauty by whom he had been
flattered and caressed to the closet of the minister where he was
greeted by a stern brow and the exclamation of "Cinq-Mars, Cinq-Mars,
you are forgetting yourself!" found considerable difficulty in
controlling his impetuosity; but it was even worse when to this rebuke
Richelieu at times added in a contemptuous tone: "Remember to whom you
owe your fortune, and that it will be quite as easy for me to divest you
of the high-sounding titles which have turned your brain as it was to
procure them for you. Be warned, therefore; for if you do not conduct
yourself with more propriety, and evince more respect for my authority,
I will have you turned out of the palace like a lackey."

The constant repetition of these taunts made the impetuous blood of the
haughty youth boil in his veins; while the lingering remnant of
affection which he had hitherto retained for the friend of his father
and his own benefactor became gradually changed to hate, and impelled
him to redouble his zeal about the person of the sovereign, in order
that he might one day secure sufficient influence over the latter's mind
to enable him to revenge the insults offered to his pride.

At this precise period Cinq-Mars--who, had he not been brought into
close contact with a more matured and stronger mind than his own, would
in all probability have frittered away his vengeance in petty and
puerile annoyances which would rather have worried than alarmed the
Cardinal--formed a fast friendship with Francois Auguste de Thou, who
had long ceased to conceal his hatred of the minister. In the study of
his father, the celebrated historian, M. de Thou had learned to feel an
innate contempt for all constituted authorities, even while he professed
to be at once a Catholic, a royalist, and a patriot; but, unlike his
father, the young scholar was not satisfied with theories; he required
active employment for the extraordinary energies with which he was
gifted; and abandoning the literary leisure in which the elder De Thou
so much delighted, he became in early manhood commissary of the army of
the Cardinal de la Valette during his Italian campaign, and subsequently
he was appo