nd extraordinary resolutions that
the passions may raise up in you, to the marvellous sacrifices they may
suggest to you. A lackey coming and asking your orders will at once break
the charm and bring you back to your real life. It is this contest
between your projects and your position which destroys you. You are
invariably angry with yourself; you bitterly reproach yourself."

Marie turned away her head.

"Yes, you believe yourself criminal. Pardon yourself, Marie; all men are
beings so relative and so dependent one upon another that I know not
whether the great retreats of the world that we sometimes see are not
made for the world itself. Despair has its pursuits, and solitude its
coquetry. It is said that the gloomiest hermits can not refrain from
inquiring what men say of them. This need of public opinion is
beneficial, in that it combats, almost always victoriously, that which is
irregular in our imagination, and comes to the aid of duties which we too
easily forget. One experiences (you will feel it, I hope) in returning to
one's proper lot, after the sacrifice of that which had diverted the
reason, the satisfaction of an exile returning to his family, of a sick
person at sight of the sun after a night afflicted with frightful dreams.

"It is this feeling of a being returned, as it were, to its natural state
that creates the calm which you see in many eyes that have also had their
tears-for there are few women who have not known tears such as yours. You
would think yourself perjured if you renounced Cinq-Mars! But nothing
binds you; you have more than acquitted yourself toward him by refusing
for more than two years past the royal hands offered you. And, after all,
what has he done, this impassioned lover? He has elevated himself to
reach you; but may not the ambition which here seems to you to have aided
love have made use of that love? This young man seems to me too profound,
too calm in his political stratagems, too independent in his vast
resolutions, in his colossal enterprises, for me to believe him solely
occupied by his tenderness. If you have been but a means instead of an
end, what would you say?"

"I would still love him," answered Marie. "While he lives, I am his."

"And while I live," said the Queen, with firmness, "I will oppose the
alliance."

At these last words the rain and hail fell violently on the balcony. The
Queen took advantage of the circumstance abruptly to leave the room and
pass in