eu, he must
overcome him or be crushed by him. Tomorrow I shall strike the last blow;
did I not just now, in your presence, engage to do so?"

"And it is that very engagement that I would oppose. What confidence have
you in those to whom you thus abandon your life? Have you not read their
secret thoughts?"

"I know them all; I have read their hopes through their feigned rage; I
know that they tremble while they threaten. I know that even now they are
ready to make their peace by giving me up; but it is my part to sustain
them and to decide the King. I must do it, for Marie is my betrothed, and
my death is written at Narbonne. It is voluntarily, it is with full
knowledge of my fate, that I have thus placed myself between the block
and supreme happiness. That happiness I must tear from the hands of
Fortune, or die on that scaffold. At this instant I experience the joy of
having broken down all doubt. What! blush you not at having thought me
ambitious from a base egoism, like this Cardinal--ambitious from a
puerile desire for a power which is never satisfied? I am ambitious, but
it is because I love. Yes, I love; in that word all is comprised. But I
accuse you unjustly. You have embellished my secret intentions; you have
imparted to me noble designs (I remember them), high political
conceptions. They are brilliant, they are grand, doubtless; but--shall I
say it to you?--such vague projects for the perfecting of corrupt
societies seem to me to crawl far below the devotion of love. When the
whole soul vibrates with that one thought, it has no room for the nice
calculation of general interests; the topmost heights of earth are far
beneath heaven."

De Thou shook his head.

"What can I answer?" he said. "I do not understand you; your reasoning
unreasons you. You hunt a shadow."

"Nay," continued Cinq-Mars; "far from destroying my strength, this inward
fire has developed it. I have calculated everything. Slow steps have led
me to the end which I am about to attain. Marie drew me by the hand;
could I retreat? I would not have done it though a world faced me.
Hitherto, all has gone well; but an invisible barrier arrests me. This
barrier must be broken; it is Richelieu. But now in your presence I
undertook to do this; but perhaps I was too hasty. I now think I was so.
Let him rejoice; he expected me. Doubtless he foresaw that it would be
the youngest whose patience would first fail. If he played on this
calculation, he playe