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