A young Carthusian thrust his pale face between two guards.  All the conspirators rose above the kneeling people.  Every one put his hand to his belt or in his bosom, approaching close to the soldier whom he was to poniard.

“What is he doing?” asked the Carthusian.  “Has he his hat upon his head?”

“He throws his hat upon the ground far from him,” calmly answered the arquebusier.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FETE

“Mon Dieu! quest-ce que ce monde!”

Dernieres paroles de M. Cinq-Mars

The same day that the melancholy procession took place at Lyons, and during the scenes we have just witnessed, a magnificent fete was given at Paris with all the luxury and bad taste of the time.  The powerful Cardinal had determined to fill the first two towns in France with his pomp.  The Cardinal’s return was the occasion on which this fete was announced, as given to the King and all his court.

Master of the French empire by force, the Cardinal desired to be master of French opinion by seduction; and, weary of dominating, hoped to please.  The tragedy of “Mirame” was to be represented in a hall constructed expressly for this great day, which raised the expenses of this entertainment, says Pelisson, to three hundred thousand crowns.

The entire guard of the Prime-Minister were under arms; his four companies of musketeers and gens d’armes were ranged in a line upon the vast staircases and at the entrance of the long galleries of the Palais-Cardinal.  This brilliant pandemonium, where the mortal sins have a temple on each floor, belonged that day to pride alone, which occupied it from top to bottom.  Upon each step was placed one of the arquebusiers of the Cardinal’s guard, holding a torch in one hand and a long carbine in the other.  The crowd of his gentlemen circulated between these living candelabra, while in the large garden, surrounded by huge chestnut-trees, now replaced by a range of archers, two companies of mounted light-horse, their muskets in their hands, were ready to obey the first order or the first fear of their master.

The Cardinal, carried and followed by his thirty-eight pages, took his seat in his box hung with purple, facing that in which the King was half reclining behind the green curtains which preserved him from the glare of the flambeaux.  The whole court filled the boxes, and rose when the King appeared.  The orchestra commenced a brilliant overture, and the pit was thrown open to all the men of the town and the army who presented themselves.  Three impetuous waves of spectators rushed in and filled it in an instant.  They were standing, and so thickly pressed together that the movement of a single arm sufficed to cause in the crowd a movement similar to the waving of a field of corn.  There was one man whose head thus described a large circle, as that of a compass, without his feet quitting the spot to which they were fixed; and some young men were carried out fainting.