t satisfy."

"I breathe again!" exclaimed Cinq-Mars; "he believes not in God!"

Joseph continued:

"Richelieu, you, and I were born ambitious; it followed, then, that
everything must be sacrificed to this idea."

"Wretched man, do not compare me to thyself!"

"It is the plain truth, nevertheless," replied the Capuchin'; "only you
now see that our system was better than yours."

"Miserable wretch, it was for love--"

"No, no! it was not that; here are mere words again. You have perhaps
imagined it was so; but it was for your own advancement. I have heard
you speak to the young girl. You thought but of yourselves; you do not
love each other. She thought but of her rank, and you of your ambition.
One loves in order to hear one's self called perfect, and to be adored;
it is still the same egoism."

"Cruel serpent!" cried Cinq-Mars; "is it not enough that thou hast
caused our deaths? Why dost thou come here to cast thy venom upon the
life thou hast taken from us? What demon has suggested to thee thy
horrible analysis of hearts?"

"Hatred of everything which is superior to myself," replied Joseph, with
a low and hollow laugh, "and the desire to crush those I hate under my
feet, have made me ambitious and ingenious in finding the weakness of
your dreams."

"Just Heaven, dost thou hear him?" exclaimed Cinq-Mars, rising and
extending his arms upward.

The solitude of his prison; the pious conversations of his friend; and,
above all, the presence of death, which, like the light of an unknown
star, paints in other colors the objects we are accustomed to see;
meditations on eternity; and (shall we say it?) the great efforts he
had made to change his heartrending regrets into immortal hopes, and
to direct to God all that power of love which had led him astray upon
earth-all this combined had worked a strange revolution in him; and like
those ears of corn which ripen suddenly on receiving one ray from the
sun, his soul had acquired light, exalted by the mysterious influence of
death.

"Just Heaven!" he repeated, "if this wretch and his master are human,
can I also be a man? Behold, O God, behold two distinct ambitions--the
one egoistical and bloody, the other devoted and unstained; theirs
roused by hatred, and ours inspired by love. Look down, O Lord, judge,
and pardon! Pardon, for we have greatly erred in walking but for a
single day in the same paths which, on earth, possess but one name to
whatever end it may tend!