In the broad valley of the Loire, between Tours and Saumur, the train stops at the small station of Cinq-Mars. This station lies beside the Loire, which glides by in a current so broad and majestic, as to suggest a series of huge lakes, with banks bordered by sand and scrub, rather than a river. On either side of the Loire run ranges of low hills, their glassy surface gashed and scored by many a rent revealing the chalky soil beneath, their summits fringed with scanty underwood, and dotted with groups of gnarled and knotted oaks and ragged fir-trees, the rough roots clasping cairns of rock and blocks of limestone. In the dimples of these low hills lie snugly sheltered villas, each within its own garden and policy. These villas thicken as the small township of Cinq-Mars is approached,—a nest of bright little houses, gay streets, and tall chimneys telling of provincial commerce, all clustered beneath chalky cliffs which rise abruptly behind, rent by many a dark fissure and blackened watercourse. Aloft, on a grassy marge, where many an old tree bends its scathed trunk to the prevailing wind, among bushes and piled-up heaps of stones, rise the ruins of a feudal castle. Two gate towers support an arch, through which the blue sky peeps, and some low, broken walls, without form and void, skirt the summit of the cliff. This ruin, absolutely pathetic in its desolate loneliness, is all that remains of the ancestral castle of the Cöiffiers de Cinq-Mars, Marquis d'Effiat. From this hearth and from these shattered walls, now raised "_to the height of infamy_," sprung that handsome, shallow, ambitious coxcomb, known as the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, who succeeded Mademoiselle de Lafayette in the favour of Louis XIII. Deprived of Louise de Lafayette, the King's spirits languished. In spite of his partial reconciliation with Anne of Austria, and the birth of a son, he was sullen and gloomy, spoke to no one, and desired no one to speak to him. When etiquette required his presence in the Queen's apartments, he seated himself in a corner, yawned, and fell asleep. The internal malady of which he died had already undermined his always feeble frame. His condition was altogether so critical, that the Cardinal looked round for a companion to solace his weariness. Henri de Cinq-Mars had lately come up to Paris from Touraine. In years he was a boy, under twenty. He was gentle, adroit, and amusing, but weak, and the Cardinal believed he had found in him the facile instrument he sought.