Henri de Saint-Mars

“ Ah, who will protect thee, my son, in that dangerous place?” he continued, reseating himself, and again taking his pupil’s hands in his own with a paternal solicitude, as he endeavored to read his thoughts in his countenance.
“Why, I do not exactly know,” said Cinq-Mars, looking up at the ceiling; “but I suppose it will be the Cardinal de Richelieu, who was the friend of my father.”
“Ah, my dear Henri, you make me tremble; he will ruin you unless you become his docile instrument. Alas, why can not I go with you? Why must I act the young man of twenty in this unfortunate affair? ”

“ Happier than I, you have only to combat hatred, while I struggle against friendship. The Cardinal will oppose to you men and weapons; but the Queen, the gentle Anne of Austria, employs only tender advice, caresses, sometimes tears."
"Touching and invincible constraint to make you accept a throne," said Cinq-Mars, bitterly. "I well conceive you must need some efforts to resist such seductions; but first, Madame, I must release you from your vows."
"Alas, great Heaven! what is there, then, against us?"
"There is God above us, and against us," replied Henri, in a severe tone ”

“ Henri had accompanied the Duke in his flight to England after the conspiracy of Cinq Mars, and he had returned with him; he possessed his entire confidence, and he relates nothing in which he himself had not taken a considerable part. Henri’s character was very different to that of his brother Alexandre. He was a well-educated man, full of honour and courage, not in the least given to boasting, averse to all intrigue, and born to make his way through life by the straightest paths in the career of arms. ”

“ She always comes in after the first course, and makes every one rise from the table.”
“Ah, my good Grandchamp,” said in a low voice a young maid servant who was passing, “do not speak of the Duchess; she is very sorrowful, and I believe that she will remain in her apartment. Santa Maria! what a shame to travel to-day! to depart on a Friday, the thirteenth of the month, and the day of Saint Gervais and of Saint-Protais—the day of two martyrs! I have been telling my beads all the morning for Monsieur de Cinq-Mars ”

“ And so, doubtless, was Henri!
She was indeed only nineteen, but already Paris was at her feet. Amaury Delande had written plays for her; Coty had called his newest and most exotic perfume after her; the Abbé Lapraze, over at the church of Paul de Saint-Victor, had anathematized her; and Arthur Meyer had said in the Gaulois that she looked like a Watteau painted by Forain—and the Count was sixty-five, gouty, addicted to flannel underwear, and arrived at that epoch in life where one breakfasts on a bromo-seltzer, a cigarette, and no food. ”

“ And with what was evidently a forced gayety, the girl sought to banish from his mind thoughts of the cloud blackening the future.
“Come, Jean Marcel!” she said with a laugh, speaking as always in French. “Are you not glad to see us that you wear a face so dismal? You have not told me how you like this new muslin gown.” She pirouetted on her shapely moccasined feet, challenging his approval. “Henri says I’m growing thin. Is it not becoming? No? Then I shall eat and grow as fat as big Marie, the Montagnais cook at the Gillies’.”
The sober face of Jean Marcel lighted at her pleasantry. ”

“ But, with an exceptional woman, like Mademoiselle de Vermont, brought up in view of wide horizons, in the midst of plains cleared by bold pioneers, among whom the most valorous governed the others, a man like General de Prerolles realized her ideal all the more, because both their natures presented the same striking characteristics: carelessness of danger, and frankness carried to its extremest limit. Therefore, this declaration— to use the common expression—entirely free from artifice or affectation, charmed Henri for one reason, yet, on the other hand, redoubled his perplexity. ”

“ Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) , founded at Paris a society which was called by his name. His views were socialistic.
Still youth must assert itself somehow, and therefore most young Frenchmen go through an “artistic” period: that is, those who have no money spend their time in humble cafés of the Latin quarter with humble grisettes, and those who have money resort to large cafés and more expensive ladies. They have no “Schiller” stage ”

“ Vigny's own remarks, despite subsequent—if not recantation—qualification of them, show that the lie of his land, the tendency of his exertion, was in these two, as I think, wrong directions. And I own that this explained to me what I had chiefly before noticed as merely a fact, without enquiring into it, that Cinq-Mars, admirably written as it is; possessing as it does, with a hero who might have been made interesting, a great person like Richelieu to make due and not undue use of; plenty of thrilling incident at hand, and some actually brought in ”

“ I will remove the men in whom he trusts, and replace them by others whom he has condemned to die, and who are near at hand confined in the northern tower—the Tour des Oubliettes, which overhangs the river. His creatures will occupy their places. I will recommend a physician—an empyric who is devoted to me—to the illustrious Cardinal, who has been given over by the most scientific in Paris. If you will unite with me, he shall convey to him a universal and eternal remedy.”
“Away!” exclaimed Cinq-Mars. “Leave me, thou infernal monk! No, thou art like no other man! ”

“ A man, a people have invoked my name in vain; a family curses me! Oh, how unhappy are kings!”
And the Prince, as he concluded, threw aside his papers and wept.
“Ah, Sire, those are blessed tears that you weep!” exclaimed Cinq-Mars, with sincere admiration. “Would that all France were here with me! She would be astonished at this spectacle, and would scarcely believe it.”
“Astonished! France, then, does not know me?”
“No, Sire,” said D’Effiat, frankly; “no one knows you. And I myself, with the rest of the world, at times accuse you of coldness and indifference.” ”

“ 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.
“He who touches them may die of the contact,” said Monsieur.
“But what a noble devotion!” cried the Queen.
“How I should admire the hero!” said Marie, in a half-whisper.
“I will do it,” answered Cinq-Mars.
“We will do it,” said M. de Thou, in his ear. ”

“ No spectator of the little drama enacted within the Revolution can forget how dominant, distinct, unrepeated, this artful image of Henri burns itself in upon the memory. To wish him age and a competency were superstition. Mark how, even in her hasty finishing touches, Nature did not bungle with him. She rounds out her white ideal. She leaves us convinced that living a span, and dying in the hurly-burly, he best fulfilled himself. ”

“ Not wishing to engage in a war of words, the Queen courtesied somewhat less coldly, and quitted the apartment with Marie, who cast upon Cinq-Mars one of those looks which comprehend at once all the emotions of the soul. He seemed to read in her beautiful eyes the eternal and mournful devotion of a woman who has given herself up forever; and he felt that if he had once thought of withdrawing from his enterprise, he should now have considered himself the basest of men. ”

“ The central event of this period was the five days’ victory at Saumur. By Cathelineau’s order a Te Deum was sung in the church, the captured flags, rent with balls and black with smoke and blood, dipping to the chancel floor at every sound of the Holy Name. Such a spectacle put them all in an exalted mood. Henri was found at a window, meekly musing over their fortunes: he, the deliverer, who placed elsewhere the primal credit of the deliverance. The garrison here was left to his charge, much to his disrelish. “They make a veteran of me!” ”

“ It is small wonder that a species of folk-lore, in his own neighborhood, has, in three generations, grown up around him, which makes it a difficult thing to disentangle what is true of him from what might as well be true: for the French are not given, even in their gossip, to incongruities. Every rustic, who, having served under Henri, lived to startle a more prosaic world with his reminiscences, had anecdotes to tell of him really vital and precious ”

“ Cinq-Mars went on without answering, and still with his face in his hands. After an instant of silence he removed them, and allowed his eyes to be seen, full of generous tears. He pressed the hand of his friend warmly, and said to him, with a penetrating accent:
“Monsieur de Thou, you have recalled to me the most beautiful thoughts of my earliest youth. Do not believe that I have fallen; I am consumed by a secret hope which I can not confide even to you. I despise, as much as you, the ambition which will seem to possess me. All the world will believe in it; but what do I care for the world? ”

“ For Maret’s mission to England in 1792 and his work at Lille in 1797, see Augustus W. Miles, Letters on the French Revolution; J. H. Rose, The Life and Times of William Pitt, and for other incidents of Maret’s career, the memoirs of Bourrienne, Pasquier, Méneval and Savary (duc de Rovigo) , may be consulted. Thiers’s account of Maret is in general hostile to him. ”

“ Henri, thus weakened, abandoned the siege of Paris, and fell back; with the bulk of his forces he marched into Normandy, so as to be within reach of English succour; a considerable army went into Champagne, to be ready to join any Swiss or German help that might come. These were the great days in the life of Henri of Navarre. Henri showed himself a hero, who strove for a great cause—the cause of European freedom—as well as for his own crown.
The Duc de Mayenne followed the Huguenots down into the west, and found Henri awaiting him in a strong position at Arques, near Dieppe ”

“ But they left the ranks when they chose; after a success, rather than after a defeat, they would scatter to their homes like so much thistle-down in the air, and it was hopeless to try to follow up an advantage gained. It was when difficulties were suspended that, in the wisdom of their villageous heads, they hurried off, one to his wife, and one to his farm, and one to his merchandise. No general was baffled and angered oftener by this freak than Henri. The valor of the Vendeans was incomparable, though one might borrow a musical metaphor and add that it swerved too easily from pitch. ”

“ The King, Monsieur, and the rest, have only shown their teeth against me, and without depriving me of one single man. The young Cinq-Mars is the only man among them who has any consecutiveness of ideas. ”

“ The whole country-side looks to you; it will obey you.” “God wills it,” cried Peter the Hermit. He willed that God should will it, at any rate, and all Christendom took him at his word. The peasant boy had some spell beside eloquence, for Henri’s thinking was over. “Tell them that I will come,” he answered. That night, accompanied by one servant, a guide, and the tremulous Chevalier, afraid to stand his chances at Clisson, provided with a brace of pistols and carrying a stick, Henri mounted his horse and waved12 farewell. ”

“ The farther north the army strayed the more irksome became his position, for his steadfast conviction was against the expediency of trying to reach Granville at all. When, after the affair of Château-Gontier, a unique opportunity arose to retrace the march and re-establish headquarters in the Bocage, it went hard indeed with Henri that none would listen to him. Again, at Laval, he would have pushed through Kléber’s disorganized forces, towards the safe though smoking labyrinths at home; but, misled by some vague encouraging rumor, the majority clamored to push on. ”

“ The good Marechal had tears in his eyes; but the young Marquis d’Effiat and the Italians, looking at one another, could not help smiling to think that at present the Princesse de Conde was far from young and pretty. Cinq-Mars noticed this interchange of glances, and smiled also, but bitterly.
“Is it true then,” he thought, “that the affections meet the same fate as the fashions, and that the lapse of a few years can throw the same ridicule upon a costume and upon love? Happy is he who does not outlive his youth and his illusions, and who carries his treasures with him to the grave!” ”

“ Two guards entered the apartment of De Thou, and led him forth. He advanced, and bowed gravely, while an angelical smile played upon his lips. Embracing Cinq-Mars, "Here at last is our day of glory," said he. "We are about to gain heaven and eternal happiness."
"We understand," said Laubardemont, "we have been given to understand by Monsieur de Cinq-Mars himself, that you were acquainted with this conspiracy?" ”

“ What a glorious and heavenly spectacle! What a sublime bond between heaven and earth! Life, death, and eternity are there; open it at random.”
“Yes!” said Cinq-Mars, rising with a vivacity which had something boyish in it; “you shall read to me, but let me open the book. You know the old superstition of our country—when the mass-book is opened with a sword, the first page on the left contains the destiny of him who reads, and the first person who enters after he has read is powerfully to influence the reader’s future fate.” ”