"Are these, then, all your terrors?" asked Cinq-Mars, bitterly.

"Can I have greater? Oh, 'mon ami', in what a tone, with what a voice,
do you address me! Are you angry because I came too late?"

"Too soon, Madame, much too soon, for the things you are to hear--for I
see you are far from prepared for them."

Marie, affected at the gloomy and bitter tone of his voice, began to
weep.

"Alas, what have I done," she said, "that you should call me Madame, and
treat me thus harshly?"

"Be tranquil," replied Cinq-Mars, but with irony in his tone. "'Tis not,
indeed, you who are guilty; but I--I alone; not toward you, but for you."

"Have you done wrong, then? Have you ordered the death of any one? Oh,
no, I am sure you have not, you are so good!"

"What!" said Cinq-Mars, "are you as nothing in my designs? Did I
misconstrue your thoughts when you looked at me in the Queen's boudoir?
Can I no longer read in your eyes? Was the fire which animated them that
of a love for Richelieu? That admiration which you promised to him who
should dare to say all to the King, where is it? Is it all a falsehood?"

Marie burst into tears.

"You still speak to me with bitterness," she said; "I have not deserved