“Yes, you believe yourself criminal.  Pardon yourself, Marie; all men are beings so relative and so dependent one upon another that I know not whether the great retreats of the world that we sometimes see are not made for the world itself.  Despair has its pursuits, and solitude its coquetry.  It is said that the gloomiest hermits can not refrain from inquiring what men say of them.  This need of public opinion is beneficial, in that it combats, almost always victoriously, that which is irregular in our imagination, and comes to the aid of duties which we too easily forget.  One experiences (you will feel it, I hope) in returning to one’s proper lot, after the sacrifice of that which had diverted the reason, the satisfaction of an exile returning to his family, of a sick person at sight of the sun after a night afflicted with frightful dreams.

“It is this feeling of a being returned, as it were, to its natural state that creates the calm which you see in many eyes that have also had their tears-for there are few women who have not known tears such as yours.  You would think yourself perjured if you renounced Cinq-Mars!  But nothing binds you; you have more than acquitted yourself toward him by refusing for more than two years past the royal hands offered you.  And, after all, what has he done, this impassioned lover?  He has elevated himself to reach you; but may not the ambition which here seems to you to have aided love have made use of that love?  This young man seems to me too profound, too calm in his political stratagems, too independent in his vast resolutions, in his colossal enterprises, for me to believe him solely occupied by his tenderness.  If you have been but a means instead of an end, what would you say?”

“I would still love him,” answered Marie.  “While he lives, I am his.”

“And while I live,” said the Queen, with firmness, “I will oppose the alliance.”

At these last words the rain and hail fell violently on the balcony.  The Queen took advantage of the circumstance abruptly to leave the room and pass into that where the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Mazarin, Madame de Guemenee, and the Prince-Palatine had been awaiting her for a short time.  The Queen walked up to them.  Marie placed herself in the shade of a curtain in order to conceal the redness of her eyes.  She was at first unwilling to take part in the sprightly conversation; but some words of it attracted her attention.  The Queen was showing to the Princesse de Guemenee diamonds she had just received from Paris.

“As for this crown, it does not belong to me.  The King had it prepared for the future Queen of Poland.  Who that is to be, we know not.”  Then turning toward the Prince-Palatine, “We saw you pass, Prince.  Whom were you going to visit?”

“Mademoiselle la Duchesse de Rohan,” answered the Pole.

The insinuating Mazarin, who availed himself of every opportunity to worm out secrets, and to make himself necessary by forced confidences, said, approaching the Queen: