The cardinal did not think it necessary to wait for the sentence.  He had arrived at his house at Lyons, in a sort of square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards; there, stretched upon his couch, a table covered with papers beside him, he worked and chatted with whomsoever of his servants he had been pleased to have as his companion on the road.  It was in the same equipage that he left Lyons to gain the Loire and return to Paris.  On his passage, it was necessary to pull down lumps of wall and throw bridges over the fosses to make way for this vast litter and the indomitable man that lay dying within it.

It was on the 12th of September, 1642, that the accused appeared before the commission; there were now but two of them; the Duke of Bouillon had made his private arrangement with the cardinal, confessing everything, and requesting “to have his life spared in order that he might employ it to preserve to the Catholic church five little children whom his death would leave to persons of the opposite religion.”  In consideration of this pardon, a demand was made upon him to give up Sedan to the king, “though it were easy to gain possession of-it by investment.”  The duke consented to all, and he awaited in his dungeon at Pierre-Bncise the execution of his accomplices who had no town to surrender.  Their death was to be the signal of his liberation.

The two accused denied nothing.  M. de Thou merely maintained that he had not been in any way mixed up with the conspiracy, proving that he had blamed the treaty with Spain, and that his only crime was not having revealed it.  “He believed me to be his friend, his one faithful friend,” said he, speaking of Cinq-Mars, “and I had no mind to betray him.”  The grand equerry told in detail the story of the plot, his connection with the Duke of Orleans, who had missed no opportunity of paying court to him, the resolutions taken in concert with the Duke of Bouillon, and the treaty concluded with Spain, “confessing that he had erred, and had no hope but in the clemency of the king, and of the cardinal, whose generosity would be so much the more shown in asking pardon for him as he was the less bound to do so.”  There was not long to wait for the decree; the votes were unanimous against the grand equerry, a single one of the judges pronouncing in favor of M. de Thou.  The latter turned towards Cinq-Mars, and said, “Ah! well, sir; humanly speaking, I might complain of you; you have placed me in the dock, and you are the cause of my death; but God knows how I love you.  Let us die, sir, let us die courageously, and win Paradise.”

The decree against Cinq-Mars sentenced him to undergo the question in order to get a more complete revelation of his accomplices.  “It had been resolved not to put him to it,” says Tallemant des Reaux:  “but it was exhibited to him nevertheless; it gave him a turn, but it did not make him do anything to belie himself, and he was just taking off his doublet, when he was told to raise his hand in sign of telling the truth.”