; 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. That happiness I must tear from the
hands of Fortune, or die on that scaffold. At this instant I experience
the joy of having broken down all doubt. What! blush you not at having
thought me ambitious from a base egoism, like this Cardinal--ambitious
from a puerile desire for a power which is never satisfied? I am
ambitious, but it is because I love. Yes, I love; in that word all is
comprised. But I accuse you unjustly. You have embellished my secret
intentions; you have imparted to me noble designs (I remember them),
high political conceptions. They are brilliant, they are grand,
doubtless; but--shall I say it to you?--such vague projects for the
perfecting of corrupt societies seem to me to crawl far below the
devotion of love. When the whole soul vibrates with that one thought, it
has no room for the nice calculation of general interests; the topmost
heights of earth are far beneath heaven."

De Thou shook his head.

"What can I answer?"