The latter turned towards Cinq-Mars, and said, "Ah! well, sir; humanly speaking, I might complain of you; you have placed me in the dock, and you are the cause of my death; but God knows how I love you.

Let us die, sir, let us die courageously, and win Paradise." The decree against Cinq-Mars sentenced him to undergo the question in order to get a more complete revelation of his accomplices.

"It had been resolved not to put him to it," says Tallemant des Reaux: "but it was exhibited to him nevertheless; it gave him a turn, but it did not make him do anything to belie himself, and he was just taking off his doublet, when he was told to raise his hand in sign of telling the truth." The execution was not destined to be long deferred; the very day on which the sentence was delivered saw the execution of it.

"The grand equerry showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a Christian," wrote M.du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, "He died with astoundingly great courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his eyes bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck." M.de Thou said not a word save to God, repeating the Credo even to the very scaffold, with a fervor of devotion that touched all present.

"We have seen," says a report of the time, "the favorite of the greatest and most just of kings lose his head upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two, but with a firmness which has scarcely its parallel in our histories.