“I promised you blind adherence,” said the counsellor; “but truly I can not keep my eyes shut much longer if—­”

“Once again, I will give you a full explanation as we return from the Queen.  But make haste; it is nearly ten o’clock.”

“Well, I will go with you,” replied De Thou, conducting him into his cabinet, where were the Comte du Lude and Fournier, while he himself passed into his dressing-room.

CHAPTER XVII

TOILETTE

The carriage of the Grand Equerry was rolling rapidly toward the Louvre, when, closing the curtain, he took his friend’s hand, and said to him with emotion: 

“Dear De Thou, I have kept great secrets in my heart, and, believe me, they have weighed heavily there; but two fears impelled me to silence—­that of your danger, and—­shall I say it?—­that of your counsels.”

“Yet well you know,” replied De Thou, “that I despise the first; and I deemed that you did not despise the second.”

“No, but I feared, and still fear them.  I would not be stopped.  Do not speak, my friend; not a word, I conjure you, before you have heard and seen all that is about to take place.  I will return with you to your house on quitting the Louvre; there I will listen to you, and thence I shall depart to continue my work, for nothing will shake my resolve, I warn you.  I have just said so to the gentlemen at your house.”

In his accent Cinq-Mars had nothing of the brusqueness which clothed his words.  His voice was conciliatory, his look gentle, amiable, affectionate, his air as tranquil as it was determined.  There was no indication of the slightest effort at control.  De Thou remarked it, and sighed.

Alighting from the carriage with him, De Thou followed him up the great staircase of the Louvre.  When they entered the Queen’s apartment, announced by two ushers dressed in black and bearing ebony rods, she was seated at her toilette.  This was a table of black wood, inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass, in an infinity of designs of very bad taste, but which give to all furniture an air of grandeur which we still admire in it.  A mirror, rounded at the top, which the ladies of our time would consider small and insignificant, stood in the middle of the table, whereon were scattered jewels and necklaces.

Anne of Austria, seated before it in a large armchair of crimson velvet, with long gold fringe, was as motionless and grave as on her throne, while Dona Stefania and Madame de Motteville, on either side, lightly touched her beautiful blond hair with a comb, as if finishing the Queen’s coiffure, which, however, was already perfectly arranged and decorated with pearls.  Her long tresses, though light, were exquisitely glossy, manifesting that to the touch they must be fine and soft as silk.  The daylight fell without a shade upon her forehead, which had no reason to dread the