“What! and but for this thought, you would have had the courage to conceal yourself forever from me?  Ah, dear Henri, what have I done that you should take this care of my life?  By what fault have I deserved to survive you, if you die?  You have had the strength of mind to hoodwink me for two whole years; you have never shown me aught of your life but its flowers; you have never entered my solitude but with a joyous countenance, and each time with a fresh favor.  Ah, you must be very guilty or very virtuous!”

“Do not seek in my soul more than therein lies.  Yes, I have deceived you; and that fact was the only peace and joy I had in the world.  Forgive me for having stolen these moments from my destiny, so brilliant, alas!  I was happy in the happiness you supposed me to enjoy; I made you happy in that dream, and I am only guilty in that I am now about to destroy it, and to show myself as I was and am.  Listen:  I shall not detain you long; the story of an impassioned heart is ever simple.  Once before, I remember, in my tent when I was wounded, my secret nearly escaped me; it would have been happy, perhaps, had it done so.  Yet what would counsel have availed me?  I should not have followed it.  In a word, ’tis Marie de Mantua whom I love.”

“How! she who is to be Queen of Poland?”

“If she is ever queen, it can only be after my death.  But listen:  for her I became a courtier; for her I have almost reigned in France; for her I am about to fall—­perhaps to die.”

“Die! fall! when I have been reproaching your triumph! when I have wept over the sadness of your victory!”

“Ah! you know me but ill, if you suppose that I shall be the dupe of Fortune, when she smiles upon me; if you suppose that I have not pierced to the bottom of my destiny!  I struggle against it, but ’tis the stronger I feel it.  I have undertaken a task beyond human power; and I shall fail in it.”

“Why, then, not stop?  What is the use of intellect in the business of the world?”

“None; unless, indeed, it be to tell us the cause of our fall, and to enable us to foresee the day on which we shall fall.  I can not now recede.  When a man is confronted with such an enemy as Richelieu, he must overcome him or be crushed by him.  Tomorrow I shall strike the last blow; did I not just now, in your presence, engage to do so?”

“And it is that very engagement that I would oppose.  What confidence have you in those to whom you thus abandon your life?  Have you not read their secret thoughts?”

“I know them all; I have read their hopes through their feigned rage; I know that they tremble while they threaten.  I know that even now they are ready to make their peace by giving me up; but it is my part to sustain them and to decide the King.  I must do it, for Marie is my betrothed, and my death is written at Narbonne.  It is voluntarily, it is with full knowledge of my fate, that I have thus placed myself between the block and supreme happiness.