Hidden like a treasure; with its blue domes, its elegant minarets rising from thick walls or shooting into the air, its long terraces overlooking the wood, its light spires bending with the wind, its terraces everywhere rising over its colonnades, one might there imagine one’s self in the kingdom of Bagdad or of Cashmir, did not the blackened walls, with their covering of moss and ivy, and the pallid and melancholy hue of the sky, denote a rainy climate.  It was indeed a genius who raised this building; but he came from Italy, and his name was Primaticcio.  It was indeed a handsome prince whose amours were concealed in it; but he was a king, and he bore the name of Francois I. His salamander still spouts fire everywhere about it.  It sparkles in a thousand places on the arched roofs, and multiplies the flames there like the stars of heaven; it supports the capitals with burning crowns; it colors the windows with its fires; it meanders up and down the secret staircases, and everywhere seems to devour with its flaming glances the triple crescent of a mysterious Diane—­that Diane de Poitiers, twice a goddess and twice adored in these voluptuous woods.

The base of this strange monument is like the monument itself, full of elegance and mystery; there is a double staircase, which rises in two interwoven spirals from the most remote foundations of the edifice up to the highest points, and ends in a lantern or small lattice-work cabinet, surmounted by a colossal fleur-de-lys, visible from a great distance.  Two men may ascend it at the same moment, without seeing each other.

This staircase alone seems like a little isolated temple.  Like our churches, it is sustained and protected by the arcades of its thin, light, transparent, openwork wings.  One would think the docile stone had given itself to the finger of the architect; it seems, so to speak, kneaded according to the slightest caprice of his imagination.  One can hardly conceive how the plans were traced, in what terms the orders were explained to the workmen.  The whole thing appears a transient thought, a brilliant revery that at once assumed a durable form—–­the realization of a dream.

Cinq-Mars was slowly ascending the broad stairs which led him to the King’s presence, and stopping longer at each step, in proportion as he approached him, either from disgust at the idea of seeing the Prince whose daily complaints he had to hear, or thinking of what he was about to do, when the sound of a guitar struck his ear.  He recognized the beloved instrument of Louis and his sad, feeble, and trembling voice faintly reechoing from the vaulted ceiling.  Louis seemed trying one of those romances which he was wont to compose, and several times repeated an incomplete strain with a trembling hand.  The words could scarcely be distinguished; all that Cinq-Mars heard were a few such as ’Abandon, ennui de monde, et belle flamme.

The young favorite shrugged his shoulders as he listened.