Part 29 (1/2)
”Must I encourage you to speak?” said the Queen. ”Must I remind you that I have almost adopted you for my eldest daughter? that after seeking to unite you with the King's brother, I prepared for you the throne of Poland? Must I do more, Marie? Yes, I must, I will. If afterward you do not open your whole heart to me, I have misjudged you. Open this golden casket; here is the key. Open it fearlessly; do not tremble as I do.”
The d.u.c.h.esse de Mantua obeyed with hesitation, and beheld in this little chased coffer a knife of rude form, the handle of which was of iron, and the blade very rusty. It lay upon some letters carefully folded, upon which was the name of Buckingham. She would have lifted them; Anne of Austria stopped her.
”Seek nothing further,” she said; ”that is all the treasure of the Queen. And it is a treasure; for it is the blood of a man who lives no longer, but who lived for me. He was the most beautiful, the bravest, the most ill.u.s.trious of the n.o.bles of Europe. He covered himself with the diamonds of the English crown to please me. He raised up a fierce war and armed fleets, which he himself commanded, that he might have the happiness of once fighting him who was my husband. He traversed the seas to gather a flower upon which I had trodden, and ran the risk of death to kiss and bathe with his tears the foot of this bed in the presence of two of my ladies-in-waiting. Shall I say more? Yes, I will say it to you--I loved him! I love him still in the past more than I could love him in the present. He never knew it, never divined it. This face, these eyes, were marble toward him, while my heart burned and was breaking with grief; but I was the Queen of France!” Here Anne of Austria forcibly grasped Marie's arm. ”Dare now to complain,” she continued, ”if you have not yet ventured to speak to me of your love, and dare now to be silent when I have told you these things!”
”Ah, yes, Madame, I shall dare to confide my grief to you, since you are to me--”
”A friend, a woman!” interrupted the Queen. ”I was a woman in my terror, which put you in possession of a secret unknown to the whole world. I am a woman by a love which survives the man I loved. Speak; tell me! It is now time.”
”It is too late, on the contrary,” replied Marie, with a forced smile.
”Monsieur de Cinq-Mars and I are united forever.”
”Forever!” exclaimed the Queen. ”Can you mean it? And your rank, your name, your future--is all lost? Do you reserve this despair for your brother, the Duc de Bethel, and all the Gonzagas?”
”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.”
”G.o.d 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 Ba.s.sompierre 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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.”
And, speaking aloud to herself, the Queen continued, her eyes and head bent in the att.i.tude of reflection:
”Reproaches are useless and cruel if the evil is done. The past is no longer ours; let us think of the future. Cinq-Mars is brave, able, and even profound in his ideas. I have observed that he has done much in two years, and I now see that it was for Marie. He comports himself well; he is worthy of her in my eyes, but not so in the eyes of Europe. He must rise yet higher. The Princesse de Mantua can not, may not, marry less than a prince. He must become one. By myself I can do nothing; I am not the Queen, I am the neglected wife of the King. There is only the Cardinal, the eternal Cardinal, and he is his enemy; and perhaps this disturbance--”
”Alas! it is the beginning of war between them. I saw it at once.”
”He is lost then!” exclaimed the Queen, embracing Marie. ”Pardon me, my child, for thus afflicting you; but in times like these we must see all and say all. Yes, he is lost if he does not himself overthrow this wicked man--for the King will not renounce him; force alone--”
”He will overthrow him, Madame. He will do it, if you will a.s.sist him.
You are the divinity of France. Oh, I conjure you, protect the angel against the demon! It is your cause, that of your royal family, that of all your nation.”