The execution was not destined to be long deferred; the very day on which the sentence was delivered saw the execution of it.  “The grand equerry showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a Christian,” wrote M. du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, “He died with astoundingly great courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his eyes bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck.”  M. de Thou said not a word save to God, repeating the Credo even to the very scaffold, with a fervor of devotion that touched all present.  “We have seen,” says a report of the time, “the favorite of the greatest and most just of kings lose his head upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two, but with a firmness which has scarcely its parallel in our histories.  We have seen a councillor of state die like a saint after a crime which men cannot justly pardon.  There is nobody in the world who, knowing of their conspiracy against the state, does not think them worthy of death, and there will be few who, having knowledge of their rank and their fine natural qualities, will not mourn their sad fate.”

[Illustration:  Cinq-Mars and De Thou going to Execution——­215]

“Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of the world,” wrote Cinq-Mars to his mother, the wife of Marshal d’Effiat.  “Enough of this world; away to Paradise!” said M. de Thou, as he marched to the scaffold.  Chalais and Montmorency had used the same language.  At the last hour, and at the bottom of their hearts, the frivolous courtier and the hare-brained conspirator, as well as the great soldier and the grave magistrate, had recovered their faith in God.

CHAPTER XXXIX.——­LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND THE PROVINCES.

The story has been told of the conspiracies at court and the repeated checks suffered by the great lords in their attempts against Cardinal Richelieu.  With the exception of Languedoc, under the influence of its governor the Duke of Montmorency, the provinces took no part in these enterprises; their opposition was of another sort; and it is amongst the parliaments chiefly that we must look for it.

“The king’s cabinet and his bed-time business (petit coucher) cause me more embarrassment than the whole of Europe causes me,” said the cardinal in the days of the great storms at court; he would often have had less trouble in managing the parliaments and the Parliament of Paris in particular, if the latter had not felt itself supported by a party at court.  For a long time past a pretension had been put forward by that great body to give the king advice, and to replace towards him the vanished states-general.  “We hold the place in council of the princes and barons, who from time immemorial were near the person of the kings,” was the language used, in 1615, in the representations of the Parliament, which had dared, without the royal order, to summon the princes, dukes, peers, and officers of the crown to deliberate upon what was to be done for the service of the king, the good of the state, and the relief of the people.