“But, above all, no panic-terror!  Let us know exactly where we are, Monsieur le Grand.  You have just left the King.  Is there fear with you?”

D’Effiat had not ceased to observe Marie de Mantua, whose expressive countenance exhibited to him all her ideas far more rapidly and more surely than words.  He read there the desire that he should speak—­the desire that he should confirm the Prince and the Queen.  An impatient movement of her foot conveyed to him her will that the thing should be accomplished, the conspiracy arranged.  His face became pale and more pensive; he pondered for a moment, realizing that his destiny was contained in that hour.  De Thou looked at him and trembled, for he knew him well.  He would fain have said one word to him, only one word; but Cinq-Mars had already raised his head.  He spoke: 

“I do not think, Madame, that the King is so ill as you suppose.  God will long preserve to us this Prince.  I hope so; I am even sure of it.  He suffers, it is true, suffers much; but it is his soul more peculiarly that is sick, and of an evil which nothing can cure—­of an evil which one would not wish to one’s greatest enemy, and which would gain him the pity of the whole world if it were known.  The end of his misery—­that is to say, of his life—­will not be granted him for a long time.  His languor is entirely moral.  There is in his heart a great revolution going on; he would accomplish it, and can not.

“The King has felt for many long years growing within him the seeds of a just hatred against a man to whom he thinks he owes gratitude, and it is this internal combat between his natural goodness and his anger that devours him.  Every year that has passed has deposited at his feet, on one side, the great works of this man, and on the other, his crimes.  It is the last which now weigh down the balance.  The King sees them and is indignant; he would punish, but all at once he stops and weeps.  If you could witness him thus, Madame, you would pity him.  I have seen him seize the pen which was to sign his exile, dip it into the ink with a bold hand, and use it—­for what?—­to congratulate him on some recent success.  He at once applauds himself for his goodness as a Christian, curses himself for his weakness as a sovereign judge, despises himself as a king.  He seeks refuge in prayer, and plunges into meditation upon the future; then he rises terrified because he has seen in thought the tortures which this man merits, and how deeply no one knows better than he.  You should hear him in these moments accuse himself of criminal weakness, and exclaim that he himself should be punished for not having known how to punish.  One would say that there are spirits which order him to strike, for his arms are raised as he sleeps.  In a word, Madame, the storm murmurs in his heart, but burns none but himself.  The thunderbolts are chained.”

“Well, then, let us loose them!” exclaimed the Duc de Bouillon.