So much the better for the memory of those who are chosen to represent philosophical or moral ideas; but, once again, that is not the question.  The imagination can produce just as fine things without them; it is a power wholly creative; the imaginary beings which it animates are endowed with life as truly as the real beings which it brings to life again.  We believe in Othello as we do in Richard III., whose tomb is in Westminster; in Lovelace and Clarissa as in Paul and Virginia, whose tombs are in the Isle of France.  It is with the same eye that we must watch the performance of its characters, and demand of the Muse only her artistic Truth, more lofty than the True—­whether collecting the traits of a character dispersed among a thousand entire individuals, she composes from them a type whose name alone is imaginary; or whether she goes to their tomb to seek and to touch with her galvanic current the dead whose great deeds are known, forces them to arise again, and drags them dazzled to the light of day, where, in the circle which this fairy has traced, they re-assume unwillingly their passions of other days, and begin again in the sight of their descendants the sad drama of life.  Alfred de vigny. 1827.

CINQ-MARS

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I

THE ADIEU

Fare thee well! and if forever,
Still forever fare thee well!

Lord Byron.

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France—­that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?

If you have travelled through fair Touraine in summer, you have no doubt followed with enchantment the peaceful Loire; you have regretted the impossibility of determining upon which of its banks you would choose to dwell with your beloved.  On its right bank one sees valleys dotted with white houses surrounded by woods, hills yellow with vines or white with the blossoms of the cherry-tree, walls covered with honeysuckles, rose-gardens, from which pointed roofs rise suddenly.  Everything reminds the traveller either of the fertility of the land or of the antiquity of its monuments; and everything interests him in the work of its busy inhabitants.

Nothing has proved useless to them; it seems as if in their love for so beautiful a country—­the only province of France never occupied by foreigners—­they have determined not to lose the least part of its soil, the smallest grain of its sand.  Do you fancy that this ruined tower is inhabited only by hideous night-birds?  No; at the sound of your horse’s hoofs, the smiling face of a young girl peeps out from the ivy, whitened with the dust from the road.  If you climb a hillside covered with vines, a light column of smoke shows you that there is a chimney at your