"You may as well cease, Sir," replied the Count. "It may indeed be true that my unhappy friend is guilty and has confessed his guilt; but no language you can use will ever persuade me that, knowing my innocence, as he well does, he would say any thing that could implicate me.--I will farther answer every thing that can possibly be asked of me in a very few words. As to myself, I have nothing to confess, for I am perfectly guiltless towards the State: and as to others, I can give no information, for I am wholly ignorant of any plot, conspiracy, or treason whatsoever."
"I am sorry for your obstinacy, Monsieur de Blenau," said Lafemas rising; "for the Cardinal has resolved that you shall confess, and we have the means of making the most stubborn answer. I am, in fact, commanded this very night to use measures which might not be very agreeable to you. But I give you till to-morrow to consider, and so bid you farewell."
The plans of Cinq Mars had run into various ramifications, involving a multitude of persons in a greater or less degree; but all fell equally under the hatred of the Cardinal, and he spared no means, legal or illegal, to discover the most remote windings of the conspiracy, and to force or induce the various parties to it to make confessions, which were afterwards used as evidence against themselves, as well as others. As the proofs against De Blenau were, of course, very defective, the last command of Richelieu to Lafemas, before leaving Lyons, was to spare no power of intimidation, in order to make the prisoner criminate himself, before even granting him the form of a trial. In pursuance of these directions, Lafemas ceased not for some days to torment De Blenau with continual interrogatories, mingled with menaces and irritation, ingeniously calculated either to frighten his victim into some confession of guilt, or to throw him off his guard by rousing his anger. More than once he was carried into the chamber of the Question, and once was even bound to the rack. But though, in the secret halls of the Bastille, Lafemas would not have scrupled to proceed to any act of cruelty, yet at Lyons, amidst people upon whose silence he could not rely, he dared not put the prisoner to the question, without some appearance of legal authority. At length, therefore, the day for his trial was fixed; but yet Lafemas prepared to make him previously undergo a species of refined torture, which none but a demon could have devised.