intended visit, and the documents, for all they might be worth, were safe in the care of Madame de Sourdis. The alarm and suspicion intensified, when there was found upon the person of la Porte, the queen’s confidential servant, a letter from her to the Duchess of Chevreuse, long exiled. La Porte was thereupon, as a man of strict honesty and fidelity to his royal mistress, locked away in one of the towers of the Bastille, and all the efforts to draw from him anything incriminating the queen, were absolutely abortive; though Richelieu employed every art to shake him, from promises and emoluments, to threats of torture, which were rendered more real to his imagination, by his being taken to the torture-chamber for a sight of its equipments. Fortunately for him, a great event was at hand, which marvellously changed the aspect of political affairs. The queen, after twenty-two years of childlessness, was in a situation of promise to give an heir to the throne. Then Richelieu relaxed la Porte’s durance so far as to permit his retiring to Saumur, where he remained till the queen recalled him, on the death of the cardinal, now shadowing in, bringing with it the terrible tragedy which was the last act and deed of his hand. CHAPTER VII Mélusine—Cinq-Mars—An Ill-advised Marriage—The Conspiracy—The Revenge—The Scaffold—A Cry from the Bastille—The Lady’s Man—“The Cardinal’s Hangman”—Finis—Louis’s Evensong—A Little Oversight—The King’s Nightcap—Mazarin—Ninon’s Hero. Some few miles from Tours, along the banks of the Loire, at one of its most beautiful parts above Saumur, stands the little town of St Médard, better known as Cinq-Mars. A ruined castle crowns the heights above. It was the ancestral home of the d’Effiats, a noble family of long lineage; and before their coming, tradition told of its being the dwelling of Mélusine the _fée_, the beautiful snake-woman, who was the wife of Raymond, Count de Lusignan, placed under the terrible spell of transformation into a snake, from the waist downwards, every seventh night, for having immured her father in a rock-bound cavern, for cruelty to her mother. Disobeying Mélusine’s command, never to intrude upon her on those fatal Saturday nights, Raymond discovered the appalling reason for it, and in his rage cast her forth. The despairing cry that broke from her then, is still to be heard of stormy nights above the river; and it may be, mingles with the lamentations of the mourners over the deed of blood which was enacted in after centuries when Louis the Just was king.