er a
flower upon which I had trodden, and ran the risk of death to kiss and
bathe with his tears the foot of this bed in the presence of two of my
ladies-in-waiting. Shall I say more? Yes, I will say it to you--I loved
him! I love him still in the past more than I could love him in the
present. He never knew it, never divined it. This face, these eyes, were
marble toward him, while my heart burned and was breaking with grief; but
I was the Queen of France!" Here Anne of Austria forcibly grasped Marie's
arm. "Dare now to complain," she continued, "if you have not yet ventured
to speak to me of your love, and dare now to be silent when I have told
you these things!"

"Ah, yes, Madame, I shall dare to confide my grief to you, since you are
to me--"

"A friend, a woman!" interrupted the Queen. "I was a woman in my terror,
which put you in possession of a secret unknown to the whole world. I am
a woman by a love which survives the man I loved. Speak; tell me! It is
now time."

"It is too late, on the contrary," replied Marie, with a forced smile.
"Monsieur de Cinq-Mars and I are united forever."

"Forever!" exclaimed the Queen. "Can you mean it? And your rank, your
name, your future--is all lost? Do you reserve this despair for your
brother, the Duc de Bethel, and all the Gonzagas?"

"For more than four years I have thought of it. I am resolved; and for
ten days we have been affianced."

"Affianced!" exclaimed the Queen, clasping her hands. "You have been
deceived, Marie. Who would have dared this without the King's order? It
is an intrigue which I will know. I am sure that you have been misled and
deceived."

Marie hesitated a moment, and then said:

"Nothing is more simple, Madame, than our attachment. I inhabited, you
know, the old chateau of Chaumont, with the Marechale d'Effiat, the
mother of Monsieur de Cinq-Mars. I had retired there to mourn the death
of my father; and it soon happened that Monsieur de Cinq-Mars had to
deplore the loss of his. In this numerous afflicted family, I saw his
grief only, which was as profound as mine. All that he said, I had
already thought, and when we spoke of our afflictions we found them
wholly alike. As I had been the first to suffer, I was better acquainted
with sorrow than he; and I endeavored to console him by telling him all
that I had suffered, so that in pitying me he forgot himself. This was
the beginning of our love, which, as you see, had its birth, as it were,
bet