orders of the State groan under
his violence, and dread that colossal ambition which aspires to no less
than the temporal and even spiritual throne of France."

A murmur of approbation interrupted Cinq-Mars. There was then silence
for a moment; and they heard the sound of wind instruments, and the
measured tread of the dancers.

This noise caused a momentary diversion and a smile in the younger
portion of the assembly.

Cinq-Mars profited by this; and raising his eyes, "Pleasures of youth,"
he cried--"love, music, joyous dances--why do you not alone occupy our
leisure hours? Why are not you our sole ambition? What resentment may
we not justly feel that we have to make our cries of indignation heard
above our bursts of joy, our formidable secrets in the asylum of love,
and our oaths of war and death amid the intoxication of and of life!"

"Curses on him who saddens the youth of a people! When wrinkles furrow
the brow of the young men, we may confidently say that the finger of
a tyrant has hollowed them out. The other troubles of youth give it
despair and not consternation. Watch those sad and mournful students
pass day after day with pale foreheads, slow steps, and half-suppressed
voices. One would think they fear to live or to advance a step toward
the future. What is there then in France? A man too many."

"Yes," he continued; "for two years I have watched the insidious and
profound progress of his ambition. His strange practices, his secret
commissions, his judicial assassinations are known to you. Princes,
peers, marechals--all have been crushed by him. There is not a family in
France but can show some sad trace of his passage. If he regards us all
as enemies to his authority, it is because he would have in France none
but his own house, which twenty years ago held only one of the smallest
fiefs of Poitou.

"The humiliated parliament has no longer any voice. The presidents of
Nismes, Novion, and Bellievre have revealed to you their courageous
but fruitless resistance to the condemnation to death of the Duke de la
Vallette.

"The presidents and councils of sovereign courts have been imprisoned,
banished, suspended--a thing before unheard of--because they have raised
their voices for the king or for the public.

"The highest offices of justice, who fill them? Infamous and corrupt
men, who suck the blood and gold of the country. Paris and the maritime
towns taxed; the rural districts ruined and laid waste by th