“For more than four years I have thought of it.  I am resolved; and for ten days we have been affianced.”

“Affianced!” exclaimed the Queen, clasping her hands.  “You have been deceived, Marie.  Who would have dared this without the King’s order?  It is an intrigue which I will know.  I am sure that you have been misled and deceived.”

Marie hesitated a moment, and then said: 

“Nothing is more simple, Madame, than our attachment.  I inhabited, you know, the old chateau of Chaumont, with the Marechale d’Effiat, the mother of Monsieur de Cinq-Mars.  I had retired there to mourn the death of my father; and it soon happened that Monsieur de Cinq-Mars had to deplore the loss of his.  In this numerous afflicted family, I saw his grief only, which was as profound as mine.  All that he said, I had already thought, and when we spoke of our afflictions we found them wholly alike.  As I had been the first to suffer, I was better acquainted with sorrow than he; and I endeavored to console him by telling him all that I had suffered, so that in pitying me he forgot himself.  This was the beginning of our love, which, as you see, had its birth, as it were, between two tombs.”

“God grant, my sweet, that it may have a happy termination!” said the Queen.

“I hope so, Madame, since you pray for me,” continued Marie.  “Besides, everything now smiles upon me; but at that time I was very miserable.  The news arrived one day at the chateau that the Cardinal had called Monsieur de Cinq-Mars to the army.  It seemed to me that I was again deprived of one of my relatives; and yet we were strangers.  But Monsieur de Bassompierre spoke without ceasing of battles and death.  I retired every evening in grief, and I wept during the night.  I thought at first that my tears flowed for the past, but I soon perceived that it was for the future; and I felt that they could not be the same tears, since I wished to conceal them.  Some time passed in the expectation of his departure.  I saw him every day; and I pitied him for having to depart, because he repeated to me every instant that he would have wished to live eternally as he then did, in his own country and with us.  He was thus without ambition until the day of his departure, because he knew not whether he was—­whether he was—­I dare not say it to your Majesty—­”

Marie blushed, cast down her humid eyes, and smiled.

“Well!” said the Queen, “whether he was beloved,—­is it not so?”

“And in the evening, Madame, he left, ambitious.”

“That is evident, certainly.  He left,” said Anne of Austria, somewhat relieved; “but he has been back two years, and you have seen him?”

“Seldom, Madame,” said the young Duchess, proudly; “and always in the presence of the priest, before whom I have promised to be the wife of no other than Cinq-Mars.”

“Is it really, then, a marriage?  Have you dared to do it?  I shall inquire.  But, Heaven, what faults! how many faults in the few words I have heard!  Let me reflect upon them.”