Frances Elliot - Old Court Life in France, Volume II (of 2)

Cinq-Mars put down his book, sat upright, and looked at him.

"What the devil do you want with me, Fontrailles? I will meet you and Monsieur le Duc to-morrow. For to-night, peace."

"Have you no suspicion of what Chavigny is saying to the King all this time, Marquis?" asked Fontrailles with an ominous grin.

"None, my friend; but I shall hear it all before his coucher . His most gracious Majesty is incapable of lying down to rest before telling me every syllable," and Cinq-Mars snapped his finger and thumb contemptuously towards the door of the room within which Louis was closeted with Chavigny.

"Are you quite sure of the King, Monsieur le Grand?" asked Fontrailles significantly, still leaning over Cinq-Mars and pressing his hand upon his shoulder-knot. "It is needful for you to be quite sure of him. His Majesty is apt to be weak and treacherous."

Cinq-Mars nodded his head; then, as if something had suddenly struck him, he rose, and in his turn began to gaze curiously at Fontrailles, whose manner and countenance were strangely expressive of some unspoken fear.

"You are very tall, Monsieur le Grand," said Fontrailles abruptly, speaking low, with his hand placed over his eyes, the better to contemplate Cinq-Mars, now drawn up to his full height, and staring at him with wonder; "you are very tall," he repeated, "and I am such a little man. You are very handsome, too – the handsomest gentleman in all France – and very gracious to me also – very kind and gracious."

Fontrailles spoke thoughtfully, as a man who turned some important matter over in his mind.

"Have you come here only to tell me this, Fontrailles?" answered Cinq-Mars, laughing, and again he yawned, passed his jewelled fingers through his clustering locks, and again took up the book which he had laid down on a table beside him, and reseated himself. Fontrailles, however, had never taken his eyes off him. His gaze had deepened into an expression of deep sorrow, although he spoke jestingly. Whatever train of thought occupied him, it had not been broken by what Cinq-Mars had just said.

"You are very tall," he again repeated, as if speaking to himself, in a peculiar voice; "so tall, indeed, that you could do without your head, Monsieur le Grand, and yet be taller than I am. Perhaps this makes you careless. I am short, and I could not afford to lose my head – so – I am going to leave Narbonne instantly. The air here is as deadly to my constitution as it is to yours. Marquis, pray do believe me. Will you come with me – the tall man with the little one? – both needing a change. Will you come?"

Cinq-Mars did not heed him a whit. Fontrailles laid his hand heavily on the thick shock of Monsieur le Grand's golden curls.

"No, mille diables , no!" roared Cinq-Mars in a rage, shaking him off; "I will not go. Why should I go? For God's sake leave me. I am just at the catastrophe of my story, and you keep on tormenting me like a gadfly."

"Excuse me, Monsieur le Grand," replied Fontrailles submissively, "I did but advise you for your good. I desire your company for the sake of that comely head of yours; but, as I said, you are tall, and I am short, which makes a great difference. It is a long journey across the mountains of France into the Low Countries," added he, sighing. "That will be my road – a long and weary road. It might fatigue your excellency. I am going, Monsieur le Marquis. I am gone – Adieu!"

Cinq-Mars did not look up, and Fontrailles, turning upon him a last look full of pity, disappeared.

WHEN Chavigny left the King, Cinq-Mars entered the royal chamber. Louis was silent, absorbed, and melancholy – would answer no questions, and abruptly dismissed the favourite on the plea that he was fatigued and needed rest.

Monsieur le Grand was naturally surprised at the change. The significant words of Fontrailles recurred to him; too late he repented his careless indifference to the friendly warning. But after all, if the King failed him, there was Monsieur and there was the treaty. What had he, Cinq-Mars, to fear when the King's brother had so deeply compromised himself? The Cardinal, too, was ill – very ill; he might die. Still, as he turned to his own suite of apartments his mind misgave him. The King had not told him one word of his interview with Chavigny; and although Chavigny would have denied it upon oath on the consecrated wafer, Cinq-Mars knew he was the Cardinal's creature and his go-between with the King.

When Cinq-Mars reached his rooms he found a letter from his friend, De Thou. "Fly," said this letter – "fly instantly. I have certain intelligence that the Cardinal is acquainted with every particular of the treaty signed at Madrid. For myself I have nothing to fear; but you have incurred the deadly hatred of Richelieu."

Thereupon Cinq-Mars, hurriedly disguised himself in a Spanish cloak, with a sombrero hat slouched over his face, stole out of the prefecture where the King was staying, and made his way as fast as he could run to the city gates. They were closed. Then, fully aroused to the urgency of his position, the strange words of Fontrailles ringing in his ears, he sought out the abode of an humble friend, whom he had recommended to serve the Court with mules for the journeying to the south from Paris – a man of Touraine, whom he had known from his boyhood. He roused him from sleep – for the night had now closed in – and acquainted him with his danger. The faithful muleteer did his best. He hid him under some loose hay with the mules in the stable. It was in vain. Cinq-Mars had been seen and tracked from the prefecture to the muleteer's house, and the scented exquisite – whose word a few hours before ruled the destiny of France – was dragged out headlong from the hay, his fine clothes torn and soiled, his face scratched and bleeding, amid the hooting of the populace and the jeers of his enemies.

De Thou, his friend, was arrested on the same day, not as guilty of conspiring, but simply as being cognisant of the existence of the treaty of Madrid, which Fontrailles had carefully carried off into the Netherlands stitched in his clothes, a copy of which lay with the Cardinal.

Monsieur Duc d'Orléans was also, for the fourth time, arrested and imprisoned.

The effect of that copy of the treaty which Chavigny had shown to the King, while Cinq-Mars read his story, was instantaneous. Louis became greatly alarmed. He understood that Richelieu knew all, and therefore must be fully aware that he had himself encouraged and approved a plot to kill him. The same day that Cinq-Mars was conducted a prisoner to the Castle of Montpellier, Louis insisted upon going himself to Tarascon, to make a personal apology to Richelieu. He was already so weakened by the disease of which he died, that he was forced to be carried in a chair into the Cardinal's lodgings. They were together many hours. What passed no one knew, but it is certain that the " amiable criminal ," as Cinq-Mars is called by contemporary authors, was the scapegoat sacrificed to the offended dignity of the Cardinal; that Monsieur, the King's only brother, was to be tried for treason; and that Richelieu should be restored to the King's confidence. In his eagerness to propitiate his offended minister, Louis actually proposed to take his two sons from the custody of the Queen and place them with the Cardinal, in order to guarantee his personal safety. This abject proposition was declined by Richelieu, who was unwilling to provoke the Queen's active hostility at so critical a moment.

Richelieu had conquered, but he was dying. Though his body was broken by disease, his mind was vigorous as ever; in revenge and hatred, in courage and fortitude, his spirit was still lusty. In his enormous thirst of blood, none had ever excited him like the airy Marquis de Cinq-Mars, – a creature of his own, whom he had raised to the dizzy height of supreme power, to become his rival in love and power. The great minister felt he had made a mistake: it angered him. He had not patience to think that he should have been taken in by a butterfly, whose painted wings he had decorated with his own hands. He, the all-potent Cardinal, the ruler of France, circumvented by a boy! He swore a big oath that not only should Cinq-Mars die, but that death should be made doubly bitter to him.