“Vive Dieu!” cried Louis; “I think that not one of them is missing!  Well, Marquis, you keep your word—­you take walls on horseback.”

“In my opinion, this point was ill chosen,” said Richelieu, with disdain; “it in no way advances the taking of Perpignan, and must have cost many lives.”

“Faith, you are right,” said the King, for the first time since the intelligence of the Queen’s death addressing the Cardinal without dryness; “I regret the blood which must have been spilled here.”

“Only two of own young men have been wounded in the attack, Sire,” said old Coislin; “and we have gained new companions-in-arms, in the volunteers who guided us.”

“Who are they?” said the Prince.

“Three of them have modestly retired, Sire; but the youngest, whom you see, was the first who proposed the assault, and the first to venture his person in making it.  The two companies claim the honor of presenting him to your Majesty.”

Cinq-Mars, who was on horseback behind the old captain, took off his hat and showed his pale face, his large, dark eyes, and his long, chestnut hair.

“Those features remind me of some one,” said the King; “what say you, Cardinal?”

The latter, who had already cast a penetrating glance at the newcomer, replied: 

“Unless I am mistaken, this young man is—­”

“Henri d’Effiat,” said the volunteer, bowing.

“Sire, it is the same whom I had announced to your Majesty, and who was to have been presented to you by me; the second son of the Marechal.”

“Ah!” said Louis, warmly, “I am glad to see the son of my old friend presented by this bastion.  It is a suitable introduction, my boy, for one bearing your name.  You will follow us to the camp, where we have much to say to you.  But what! you here, Monsieur de Thou?  Whom have you come to judge?”

“Sire,” answered Coislin, “he has condemned to death, without judging, sundry Spaniards, for he was the second to enter the place.”

“I struck no one, Monsieur,” interrupted De Thou reddening; “it is not my business.  Herein I have no merit; I merely accompanied my friend, Monsieur de Cinq-Mars.”

“We approve your modesty as well as your bravery, and we shall not forget this.  Cardinal, is there not some presidency vacant?”

Richelieu did not like De Thou.  And as the sources of his dislike were always mysterious, it was difficult to guess the cause of this animosity; it revealed itself in a cruel word that escaped him.  The motive was a passage in the history of the President De Thou—­the father of the young man now in question—­wherein he stigmatized, in the eyes of posterity, a granduncle of the Cardinal, an apostate monk, sullied with every human vice.

Richelieu, bending to Joseph’s ear, whispered: 

“You see that man; his father put my name into his history.  Well, I will put his into mine.”  And, truly enough, he subsequently wrote it in blood.  At this moment, to avoid answering the King, he feigned not to have heard his question, and to be wholly intent upon the merit of Cinq-Mars and the desire to see him well placed at court.