ngs of ambition,
abandoning it to profound combinations, to criminal meditations, to the
gloomy labors of a conspirator.

Hitherto, in their secret interviews, she had always received each fresh
intelligence of his progress with the transports of pleasure of a child,
but without appreciating the labors of each of these so arduous steps
that lead to honors, and always asking him with naivete when he would be
Constable, and when they should marry, as if she were asking him when he
would come to the Caroussel, or whether the weather was fine. Hitherto,
he had smiled at these questions and this ignorance, pardonable at
eighteen, in a girl born to a throne and accustomed to a grandeur natural
to her, which she found around her on her entrance into life; but now he
made more serious reflections upon this character. And when, but just
quitting the imposing assembly of conspirators, representatives of all
the orders of the kingdom, his ear, wherein still resounded the masculine
voices that had sworn to undertake a vast war, was struck with the first
words of her for whom that war was commenced, he feared for the first
time lest this naivete should be in reality simple levity, not coming
from the heart. He resolved to sound it.

"Oh, heavens! how I tremble, Henri!" she said as she entered the
confessional; "you make me come without guards, without a coach. I always
tremble lest I should be seen by my people coming out of the Hotel de
Nevers. How much longer must I yet conceal myself like a criminal? The
Queen was very angry when I avowed the matter to her; and whenever she
speaks to me of it, 'tis with her severe air that you know, and which
always makes me weep. Oh, I am terribly afraid!"

She was silent; Cinq-Mars replied only with a deep sigh.

"How! you do not speak to me!" she said.

"Are these, then, all your terrors?" asked Cinq-Mars, bitterly.

"Can I have greater? Oh, 'mon ami', in what a tone, with what a voice, do
you address me! Are you angry because I came too late?"

"Too soon, Madame, much too soon, for the things you are to hear--for I
see you are far from prepared for them."

Marie, affected at the gloomy and bitter tone of his voice, began to
weep.

"Alas, what have I done," she said, "that you should call me Madame, and
treat me thus harshly?"

"Be tranquil," replied Cinq-Mars, but with irony in his tone. "'Tis not,
indeed, you who are guilty; but I--I alone; not toward you, but for you."

"Have y