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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Count Hannibal, by Stanley J. Weyman
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Count Hannibal
+       A Romance of the Court of France
+
+
+Author: Stanley J. Weyman
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2005  [eBook #15763]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNT HANNIBAL***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler from the 1922 John Murray edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+COUNT HANNIBAL
+A ROMANCE OF THE COURT OF FRANCE.
+by Stanley J. Weyman.
+
+
+SORORI
+SUA CAUSSA CARAE
+PRO ERGA MATREM AMORE
+ETIAM CARIORI
+HOC FRATER.
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.      CRIMSON FAVOURS
+II.     HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES
+III.    THE HOUSE NEXT THE GOLDEN MAID
+IV.     THE EVE OF THE FEAST
+V.      A ROUGH WOOING
+VI.     "WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?"
+VII.    IN THE AMPHITHEATRE
+VIII.   TWO HENS AND AN EGG
+IX.     UNSTABLE
+X.      MADAME ST. LO
+XI.     A BARGAIN
+XII.    IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE
+XIII.   DIPLOMACY
+XIV.    TOO SHORT A SPOON
+XV.     THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE
+XVI.    AT CLOSE QUARTERS
+XVII.   THE DUEL
+XVIII.  ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT
+XIX.    IN THE ORLEANNAIS
+XX.     ON THE CASTLE HILL
+XXI.    SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT
+XXII.   PLAYING WITH FIRE
+XXIII.  A MIND, AND NOT A MIND
+XXIV.   AT THE KING'S INN
+XXV.    THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART
+XXVI.   TEMPER
+XXVII.  THE BLACK TOWN
+XXVIII. IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE
+XXIX.   THE ESCAPE
+XXX.    SACRILEGE!
+XXXI.   THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS
+XXXII.  THE ORDEAL BY STEEL
+XXXIII. THE AMBUSH
+XXXIV.  "WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?"
+XXXV.   AGAINST THE WALL
+XXXVI.  HIS KINGDOM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  CRIMSON FAVOURS.
+
+
+M. de Tavannes smiled.  Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered; as
+if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door at her
+elbow, chilled her.  And then came a welcome interruption.
+
+"Tavannes!"
+
+"Sire!"
+
+Count Hannibal rose slowly.  The King had called, and he had no choice
+but to obey and go.  Yet he hung a last moment over his companion, his
+hateful breath stirring her hair.
+
+"Our pleasure is cut short too soon, Mademoiselle," he said, in the tone,
+and with the look, she loathed.  "But for a few hours only.  We shall
+meet to-morrow.  Or, it may be--earlier."
+
+She did not answer, and "Tavannes!" the King repeated with violence.
+"Tavannes!  Mordieu!" his Majesty continued, looking round furiously.
+"Will no one fetch him?  Sacre nom, am I King, or a dog of a--"
+
+"I come, sire!" the Count cried hastily.  For Charles, King of France,
+Ninth of the name, was none of the most patient; and scarce another in
+the Court would have ventured to keep him waiting so long.  "I come,
+sire; I come!" Tavannes repeated, as he moved from Mademoiselle's side.
+
+He shouldered his way through the circle of courtiers, who barred the
+road to the presence, and in part hid her from observation.  He pushed
+past the table at which Charles and the Comte de Rochefoucauld had been
+playing primero, and at which the latter still sat, trifling idly with
+the cards.  Three more paces, and he reached the King, who stood in the
+_ruelle_ with Rambouillet and the Italian Marshal.  It was the latter
+who, a moment before, had summoned his Majesty from his game.
+
+Mademoiselle, watching him go, saw so much; so much, and the King's
+roving eyes and haggard face, and the four figures, posed apart in the
+fuller light of the upper half of the Chamber.  Then the circle of
+courtiers came together before her, and she sat back on her stool.  A
+fluttering, long-drawn sigh escaped her.  Now, if she could slip out and
+make her escape!  Now--she looked round.  She was not far from the door;
+to withdraw seemed easy.  But a staring, whispering knot of gentlemen and
+pages blocked the way; and the girl, ignorant of the etiquette of the
+Court, and with no more than a week's experience of Paris, had not the
+courage to rise and pass alone through the group.
+
+She had come to the Louvre this Saturday evening under the wing of Madame
+d'Yverne, her _fiance's_ cousin.  By ill-hap Madame had been summoned to
+the Princess Dowager's closet, and perforce had left her.  Still,
+Mademoiselle had her betrothed, and in his charge had sat herself down to
+wait, nothing loth, in the great gallery, where all was bustle and gaiety
+and entertainment.  For this, the seventh day of the fetes, held to
+celebrate the marriage of the King of Navarre and Charles's sister--a
+marriage which was to reconcile the two factions of the Huguenots and the
+Catholics, so long at war--saw the Louvre as gay, as full, and as lively
+as the first of the fete days had found it; and in the humours of the
+throng, in the ceaseless passage of masks and maids of honour, guards and
+bishops, Swiss in the black, white, and green of Anjou, and Huguenot
+nobles in more sombre habits, the country-bred girl had found recreation
+and to spare.  Until gradually the evening had worn away and she had
+begun to feel nervous; and M. de Tignonville, her betrothed, placing her
+in the embrasure of a window, had gone to seek Madame.
+
+She had waited for a time without much misgiving; expecting each moment
+to see him return.  He would be back before she could count a hundred; he
+would be back before she could number the leagues that separated her from
+her beloved province, and the home by the Biscay Sea, to which even in
+that brilliant scene her thoughts turned fondly.  But the minutes had
+passed, and passed, and he had not returned.  Worse, in his place
+Tavannes--not the Marshal, but his brother, Count Hannibal--had found
+her; he, whose odious court, at once a menace and an insult, had subtly
+enveloped her for a week past.  He had sat down beside her, he had taken
+possession of her, and, profiting by her inexperience, had played on her
+fears and smiled at her dislike.  Finally, whether she would or no, he
+had swept her with him into the Chamber.  The rest had been an obsession,
+a nightmare, from which only the King's voice summoning Tavannes to his
+side had relieved her.
+
+Her aim now was to escape before he returned, and before another, seeing
+her alone, adopted his _role_ and was rude to her.  Already the courtiers
+about her were beginning to stare, the pages to turn and titter and
+whisper.  Direct her gaze as she might, she met some eye watching her,
+some couple enjoying her confusion.  To make matters worse, she presently
+discovered that she was the only woman in the Chamber; and she conceived
+the notion that she had no right to be there at that hour.  At the
+thought her cheeks burned, her eyes dropped; the room seemed to buzz with
+her name, with gross words and jests, and gibes at her expense.
+
+At last, when the situation had grown nearly unbearable, the group before
+the door parted, and Tignonville appeared.  The girl rose with a cry of
+relief, and he came to her.  The courtiers glanced at the two and smiled.
+
+He did not conceal his astonishment at finding her there.  "But,
+Mademoiselle, how is this?" he asked, in a low voice.  He was as
+conscious of the attention they attracted as she was, and as uncertain on
+the point of her right to be there.  "I left you in the gallery.  I came
+back, missed you, and--"
+
+She stopped him by a gesture.  "Not here!" she muttered, with suppressed
+impatience.  "I will tell you outside.  Take me--take me out, if you
+please, Monsieur, at once!"
+
+He was as glad to be gone as she was to go.  The group by the doorway
+parted; she passed through it, he followed.  In a moment the two stood in
+the great gallery, above the Salle des Caryatides.  The crowd which had
+paraded here an hour before was gone, and the vast echoing apartment,
+used at that date as a guard-room, was well-nigh empty.  Only at rare
+intervals, in the embrasure of a window or the recess of a door, a couple
+talked softly.  At the farther end, near the head of the staircase which
+led to the hall below, and the courtyard, a group of armed Swiss lounged
+on guard.  Mademoiselle shot a keen glance up and down, then she turned
+to her lover, her face hot with indignation.
+
+"Why did you leave me?" she asked.  "Why did you leave me, if you could
+not come back at once?  Do you understand, sir," she continued, "that it
+was at your instance I came to Paris, that I came to this Court, and that
+I look to you for protection?"
+
+"Surely," he said.  "And--"
+
+"And do you think Carlat and his wife fit guardians for me?  Should I
+have come or thought of coming to this wedding, but for your promise, and
+Madame your cousin's?  If I had not deemed myself almost your wife," she
+continued warmly, "and secure of your protection, should I have come
+within a hundred miles of this dreadful city?  To which, had I my will,
+none of our people should have come."
+
+"Dreadful?  Pardieu, not so dreadful," he answered, smiling, and striving
+to give the dispute a playful turn.  "You have seen more in a week than
+you would have seen at Vrillac in a lifetime, Mademoiselle."
+
+"And I choke!" she retorted; "I choke!  Do you not see how they look at
+us, at us Huguenots, in the street?  How they, who live here, point at us
+and curse us?  How the very dogs scent us out and snarl at our heels, and
+the babes cross themselves when we go by?  Can you see the Place des
+Gastines and not think what stood there?  Can you pass the Greve at night
+and not fill the air above the river with screams and wailings and
+horrible cries--the cries of our people murdered on that spot?"  She
+paused for breath, recovered herself a little, and in a lower tone, "For
+me," she said, "I think of Philippa de Luns by day and by night!  The
+eaves are a threat to me; the tiles would fall on us had they their will;
+the houses nod to--to--"
+
+"To what, Mademoiselle?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders and assuming a
+tone of cynicism.
+
+"To crush us!  Yes, Monsieur, to crush us!"
+
+"And all this because I left you for a moment?"
+
+"For an hour--or well-nigh an hour," she answered more soberly.
+
+"But if I could not help it?"
+
+"You should have thought of that--before you brought me to Paris,
+Monsieur.  In these troublous times."
+
+He coloured warmly.  "You are unjust, Mademoiselle," he said.  "There are
+things you forget; in a Court one is not always master of one's self."
+
+"I know it," she answered dryly, thinking of that through which she had
+gone.
+
+"But you do not know what happened!" he returned with impatience.  "You
+do not understand that I am not to blame.  Madame d'Yverne, when I
+reached the Princess Dowager's closet, had left to go to the Queen of
+Navarre.  I hurried after her, and found a score of gentlemen in the King
+of Navarre's chamber.  They were holding a council, and they begged, nay,
+they compelled me to remain."
+
+"And it was that which detained you so long?"
+
+"To be sure, Mademoiselle."
+
+"And not--Madame St. Lo?"
+
+M. de Tignonville's face turned scarlet.  The thrust in tierce was
+unexpected.  This, then, was the key to Mademoiselle's spirt of temper.
+
+"I do not understand you," he stammered.
+
+"How long were you in the King of Navarre's chamber, and how long with
+Madame St. Lo?" she asked with fine irony.  "Or no, I will not tempt
+you," she went on quickly, seeing him hesitate.  "I heard you talking to
+Madame St. Lo in the gallery while I sat within.  And I know how long you
+were with her."
+
+"I met Madame as I returned," he stammered, his face still hot, "and I
+asked her where you were.  I did not know, Mademoiselle, that I was not
+to speak to ladies of my acquaintance."
+
+"I was alone, and I was waiting."
+
+"I could not know that--for certain," he answered, making the best of it.
+"You were not where I left you.  I thought, I confess--that you had gone.
+That you had gone home."
+
+"With whom?  With whom?" she repeated pitilessly.  "Was it likely?  With
+whom was I to go?  And yet it is true, I might have gone home had I
+pleased--with M. de Tavannes!  Yes," she continued, in a tone of keen
+reproach, and with the blood mounting to her forehead, "it is to that,
+Monsieur, you expose me!  To be pursued, molested, harassed by a man
+whose look terrifies me, and whose touch I--I detest!  To be addressed
+wherever I go by a man whose every word proves that he thinks me game for
+the hunter, and you a thing he may neglect.  You are a man and you do not
+know, you cannot know what I suffer! What I have suffered this week past
+whenever you have left my side!"
+
+Tignonville looked gloomy.  "What has he said to you?" he asked, between
+his teeth.
+
+"Nothing I can tell you," she answered, with a shudder.  "It was he who
+took me into the Chamber."
+
+"Why did you go?"
+
+"Wait until he bids you do something," she answered.  "His manner, his
+smile, his tone, all frighten me.  And to-night, in all these there was a
+something worse, a hundred times worse than when I saw him last--on
+Thursday!  He seemed to--to gloat on me," the girl stammered, with a
+flush of shame, "as if I were his!  Oh, Monsieur, I wish we had not left
+our Poitou!  Shall we ever see Vrillac again, and the fishers' huts about
+the port, and the sea beating blue against the long brown causeway?"
+
+He had listened darkly, almost sullenly; but at this, seeing the tears
+gather in her eyes, he forced a laugh.
+
+"Why, you are as bad as M. de Rosny and the Vidame!" he said.  "And they
+are as full of fears as an egg is of meat!  Since the Admiral was wounded
+by that scoundrel on Friday, they think all Paris is in a league against
+us."
+
+"And why not?" she asked, her cheek grown pale, her eyes reading his
+eyes.
+
+"Why not?  Why, because it is a monstrous thing even to think of!"
+Tignonville answered, with the confidence of one who did not use the
+argument for the first time.  "Could they insult the King more deeply
+than by such a suspicion?  A Borgia may kill his guests, but it was never
+a practice of the Kings of France!  Pardieu, I have no patience with
+them!  They may lodge where they please, across the river, or without the
+walls if they choose, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec is good enough for me, and
+the King's name sufficient surety!"
+
+"I know you are not apt to be fearful," she answered, smiling; and she
+looked at him with a woman's pride in her lover.  "All the same, you will
+not desert me again, sir, will you?"
+
+He vowed he would not, kissed her hand, looked into her eyes; then
+melting to her, stammering, blundering, he named Madame St. Lo.  She
+stopped him.
+
+"There is no need," she said, answering his look with kind eyes, and
+refusing to hear his protestations.  "In a fortnight will you not be my
+husband?  How should I distrust you?  It was only that while she talked,
+I waited--I waited; and--and that Madame St. Lo is Count Hannibal's
+cousin.  For a moment I was mad enough to dream that she held you on
+purpose.  You do not think it was so?"
+
+"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.
+"Absurd!  The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,
+"you are like so many of our people!  You think a Catholic capable of the
+worst."
+
+"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.
+
+"That's over now, if people would only understand.  This wedding has put
+an end to all that.  But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly; and
+he stopped.  "Instead, let me take you home."
+
+"If you please.  Carlat and the servants should be below."
+
+He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with
+his other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase,
+that by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace.  Here a mob of
+armed servants, of lacqueys, and footboys, some bearing torches, and some
+carrying their masters' cloaks and _galoshes_, loitered to and fro.  Had
+M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less occupied
+with his own importance, he might have noted more than one face which
+looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one overt sneer at
+his expense.  But in the business of summoning Carlat--Mademoiselle de
+Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the contemptuous
+"Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the "Southern
+dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of the
+King's brother.  He was engaged in finding the steward, and in aiding him
+to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a new acquirement, which
+he had picked up since he came to Paris, he made a way for her through
+the crowd.  A moment, and the three, followed by half a dozen armed
+servants, bearing pikes and torches, detached themselves from the throng,
+and crossing the courtyard, with its rows of lighted windows, passed out
+by the gate between the Tennis Courts, and so into the Rue des Fosses de
+St. Germain.
+
+Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still
+contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of
+St. Germain rose darkly graceful.  It was something after nine: the heat
+of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint
+distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make itself heard above
+the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a subdued hum.  As
+Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the Cloister of St. Germain,
+where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots,
+had been wounded, she pressed her escort's hand, and involuntarily drew
+nearer to him.  But he laughed at her.
+
+"It was a private blow," he said, answering her unspoken thought.  "It is
+like enough the Guises sped it.  But they know now what is the King's
+will, and they have taken the hint and withdrawn themselves.  It will not
+happen again, Mademoiselle.  For proof, see the guards"--they were
+passing the end of the Rue Bethizy, in the corner house of which,
+abutting on the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, Coligny had his lodgings--"whom the
+King has placed for his security.  Fifty pikes under Cosseins."
+
+"Cosseins?" she repeated.  "But I thought Cosseins--"
+
+"Was not wont to love us!" Tignonville answered, with a confident
+chuckle.  "He was not.  But the dogs lick where the master wills,
+Mademoiselle.  He was not, but he does.  This marriage has altered all."
+
+"I hope it may not prove an unlucky one!" she murmured.  She felt
+impelled to say it.
+
+"Not it!" he answered confidently.  "Why should it?"
+
+They stopped, as he spoke, before the last house, at the corner of the
+Rue St. Honore opposite the Croix du Tiroir; which rose shadowy in the
+middle of the four ways.  He hammered on the door.
+
+"But," she said softly, looking in his face, "the change is sudden, is it
+not?  The King was not wont to be so good to us!"
+
+"The King was not King until now," he answered warmly.  "That is what I
+am trying to persuade our people.  Believe me, Mademoiselle, you may
+sleep without fear; and early in the morning I will be with you.  Carlat,
+have a care of your mistress until morning, and let Madame lie in her
+chamber.  She is nervous to-night.  There, sweet, until morning!  God
+keep you, and pleasant dreams!"
+
+He uncovered, and bowing over her hand, kissed it; and the door being
+open he would have turned away.  But she lingered as if unwilling to
+enter.
+
+"There is--do you hear it--a stir in _that_ quarter?" she said, pointing
+across the Rue St. Honore.  "What lies there?"
+
+"Northward?  The markets," he answered.  "'Tis nothing.  They say, you
+know, that Paris never sleeps.  Good night, sweet, and a fair awakening!"
+
+She shivered as she had shivered under Tavannes' eye.  And still she
+lingered, keeping him.
+
+"Are you going to your lodging at once?" she asked--for the sake, it
+seemed, of saying something.
+
+"I?" he answered a little hurriedly.  "No, I was thinking of paying
+Rochefoucauld the compliment of seeing him home.  He has taken a new
+lodging to be near the Admiral; a horrid bare place in the Rue Bethizy,
+without furniture, but he would go into it to-day.  And he has a sort of
+claim on my family, you know."
+
+"Yes," she said simply.  "Of course.  Then I must not detain you.  God
+keep you safe," she continued, with a faint quiver in her tone; and her
+lip trembled.  "Good night, and fair dreams, Monsieur."
+
+He echoed the words gallantly.  "Of you, sweet!" he cried; and turning
+away with a gesture of farewell, he set off on his return.
+
+He walked briskly, nor did he look back, though she stood awhile gazing
+after him.  She was not aware that she gave thought to this; nor that it
+hurt her.  Yet when bolt and bar had shot behind her, and she had mounted
+the cold, bare staircase of that day--when she had heard the dull echoing
+footsteps of her attendants as they withdrew to their lairs and sleeping-
+places, and still more when she had crossed the threshold of her chamber,
+and signed to Madame Carlat and her woman to listen--it is certain she
+felt a lack of something.
+
+Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack, which she neither
+defined nor acknowledged.  Or possibly it came of the night air, August
+though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the remembrance of Count
+Hannibal's smile.  Whatever its origin, she took it to bed with her and
+long after the house slept round her, long after the crowded quarter of
+the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked
+band, long after the tall houses in the gabled streets, from St. Antoine
+to Montmartre and from St. Denis on the north to St. Jacques on the
+south, had burst into rows of twinkling lights--nay, long after the
+Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark, girdled by this strange
+midnight brightness--she lay awake.  At length she too slept, and dreamed
+of home and the wide skies of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed
+day and night by the Biscay tides.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES.
+
+
+"Tavannes!"
+
+"Sire."
+
+Tavannes, we know, had been slow to obey the summons.  Emerging from the
+crowd, he found that the King, with Retz and Rambouillet, his Marshal des
+Logis, had retired to the farther end of the Chamber; apparently Charles
+had forgotten that he had called.  His head a little bent--he was tall
+and had a natural stoop--the King seemed to be listening to a low but
+continuous murmur of voices which proceeded from the door of his closet.
+One voice frequently raised was beyond doubt a woman's; a foreign accent,
+smooth and silky, marked another; a third, that from time to time broke
+in, wilful and impetuous, was the voice of Monsieur, the King's brother,
+Catherine de Medicis' favourite son.  Tavannes, waiting respectfully two
+paces behind the King, could catch little that was said; but Charles,
+something more, it seemed, for on a sudden he laughed, a violent,
+mirthless laugh.  And he clapped Rambouillet on the shoulder.
+
+"There!" he said, with one of his horrible oaths, "'tis settled!  'Tis
+settled!  Go, man, and take your orders!  And you, M. de Retz," he
+continued, in a tone of savage mockery, "go, my lord, and give them!"
+
+"I, sire?" the Italian Marshal answered, in accents of deprecation.  There
+were times when the young King would show his impatience of the Italian
+ring, the Retzs and Biragues, the Strozzis and Gondys, with whom his
+mother surrounded him.
+
+"Yes, you!" Charles answered.  "You and my lady mother!  And in God's
+name answer for it at the day!" he continued vehemently.  "You will have
+it!  You will not let me rest till you have it!  Then have it, only see
+to it, it be done thoroughly!  There shall not be one left to cast it in
+the King's teeth and cry, 'Et tu, Carole!'  Swim, swim in blood if you
+will," he continued, with growing wildness.  "Oh, 'twill be a merry
+night!  And it's true so far, you may kill fleas all day, but burn the
+coat, and there's an end.  So burn it, burn it, and--"  He broke off with
+a start as he discovered Tavannes at his elbow.  "God's death, man!" he
+cried roughly, "who sent for you?"
+
+"Your Majesty called me," Tavannes answered; while, partly urged by the
+King's hand, and partly anxious to escape, the others slipped into the
+closet and left them together.
+
+"I sent for you?  I called your brother, the Marshal!"
+
+"He is within, sire," Tavannes answered, indicating the closet.  "A
+moment ago I heard his voice."
+
+Charles passed his shaking hand across his eyes.  "Is he?" he muttered.
+"So he is!  I heard it too.  And--and a man cannot be in two places at
+once!"  Then, while his haggard gaze, passing by Tavannes, roved round
+the Chamber, he laid his hand on Count Hannibal's breast.  "They give me
+no peace, Madame and the Guises," he whispered, his face hectic with
+excitement.  "They will have it.  They say that Coligny--they say that he
+beards me in my own palace.  And--and, _mordieu_," with sudden violence,
+"it's true.  It's true enough!  It was but to-day he was for making terms
+with me!  With me, the King!  Making terms!  So it shall be, by God and
+Devil, it shall!  But not six or seven!  No, no.  All!  All!  There shall
+not be one left to say to me, 'You did it!'"
+
+"Softly, sire," Tavannes answered; for Charles had gradually raised his
+voice.  "You will be observed."
+
+For the first time the young King--he was but twenty-two years old, God
+pity him!--looked at his companion.
+
+"To be sure," he whispered; and his eyes grew cunning.  "Besides, and
+after all, there's another way, if I choose.  Oh, I've thought and
+thought, I'd have you know."  And shrugging his shoulders, almost to his
+ears, he raised and lowered his open hands alternately, while his back
+hid the movement from the Chamber.  "See-saw!  See-saw!" he muttered.
+"And the King between the two, you see.  That's Madame's king-craft.
+She's shown me that a hundred times.  But look you, it is as easy to
+lower the one as the other," with a cunning glance at Tavannes' face, "or
+to cut off the right as the left.  And--and the Admiral's an old man and
+will pass; and for the matter of that I like to hear him talk.  He talks
+well.  While the others, Guise and his kind, are young, and I've thought,
+oh, yes, I've thought--but there," with a sudden harsh laugh, "my lady
+mother will have it her own way.  And for this time she shall, but, All!
+All!  Even Foucauld, there!  Do you mark him.  He's sorting the cards.  Do
+you see him--as he will be to-morrow, with the slit in his throat and his
+teeth showing?  Why, God!" his voice rising almost to a scream, "the
+candles by him are burning blue!"  And with a shaking hand, his face
+convulsed, the young King clutched his companion's arm, and pinched it.
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders, but answered nothing.
+
+"D'you think we shall see them afterwards?" Charles resumed, in a sharp,
+eager whisper.  "In our dreams, man?  Or when the watchman cries, and we
+awake, and the monks are singing lauds at St. Germain, and--and the taper
+is low?"
+
+Tavannes' lip curled.  "I don't dream, sire," he answered coldly, "and I
+seldom wake.  For the rest, I fear my enemies neither alive nor dead."
+
+"Don't you?  By G-d, I wish I didn't," the young man exclaimed.  His brow
+was wet with sweat.  "I wish I didn't.  But there, it's settled.  They've
+settled it, and I would it were done!  What do you think of--of it, man?
+What do you think of it, yourself?"
+
+Count Hannibal's face was inscrutable.  "I think nothing, sire," he said
+dryly.  "It is for your Majesty and your council to think.  It is enough
+for me that it is the King's will."
+
+"But you'll not flinch?" Charles muttered, with a quick look of
+suspicion.  "But there," with a monstrous oath, "I know you'll not!  I
+believe you'd as soon kill a monk--though, thank God," and he crossed
+himself devoutly, "there is no question of that--as a man.  And sooner
+than a maiden."
+
+"Much sooner, sire," Tavannes answered grimly.  "If you have any orders
+in the monkish direction--no?  Then your Majesty must not talk to me
+longer.  M. de Rochefoucauld is beginning to wonder what is keeping your
+Majesty from your game.  And others are marking you, sire."
+
+"By the Lord!" Charles exclaimed, a ring of wonder mingled with horror in
+his tone, "if they knew what was in our minds they'd mark us more!  Yet,
+see Nancay there beside the door?  He is unmoved.  He looks to-day as he
+looked yesterday.  Yet he has charge of the work in the palace--"
+
+For the first time Tavannes allowed a movement of surprise to escape him.
+
+"In the palace?" he muttered.  "Is it to be done here, too, sire?"
+
+"Would you let some escape, to return by-and-by and cut our throats?" the
+King retorted, with a strange spirt of fury; an incapacity to maintain
+the same attitude of mind for two minutes together was the most fatal
+weakness of his ill-balanced nature.  "No.  All!  All!" he repeated with
+vehemence.  "Didn't Noah people the earth with eight?  But I'll not leave
+eight!  My cousins, for they are blood-royal, shall live if they will
+recant.  And my old nurse, whether or no.  And Pare, for no one else
+understands my complexion.  And--"
+
+"And Rochefoucauld, doubtless, sire?"
+
+The King, whose eye had sought his favourite companion, withdrew it.  He
+darted a glance at Tavannes.
+
+"Foucauld?  Who said so?" he muttered jealously.  "Not I!  But we shall
+see.  We shall see!  And do you see that you spare no one, M. le Comte,
+without an order.  That is your business."
+
+"I understand, sire," Tavannes answered coolly.  And after a moment's
+silence, seeing that the King had done with him, he bowed low and
+withdrew; watched by the circle, as all about a King were watched in the
+days when a King's breath meant life or death, and his smile made the
+fortunes of men.  As he passed Rochefoucauld, the latter looked up and
+nodded.
+
+"What keeps brother Charles?" he muttered.  "He's madder than ever to-
+night.  Is it a masque or a murder he is planning?"
+
+"The vapours," Tavannes answered, with a sneer.  "Old tales his old nurse
+has stuffed him withal.  He'll come by-and-by, and 'twill be well if you
+can divert him."
+
+"I will, if he come," Rochefoucauld answered, shuffling the cards.  "If
+not 'tis Chicot's business, and he should attend to it.  I'm tired, and
+shall to bed."
+
+"He will come," Tavannes answered, and moved, as if to go on.  Then he
+paused for a last word.  "He will come," he muttered, stooping and
+speaking under his breath, his eyes on the other's face.  "But play him
+lightly.  He is in an ugly mood.  Please him, if you can, and it may
+serve."
+
+The eyes of the two met an instant, and those of Foucauld--so the King
+called his Huguenot favourite--betrayed some surprise; for Count Hannibal
+and he were not intimate.  But seeing that the other was in earnest, he
+raised his brows in acknowledgment.  Tavannes nodded carelessly in
+return, looked an instant at the cards on the table, and passed on,
+pushed his way through the circle, and reached the door.  He was lifting
+the curtain to go out, when Nancay, the Captain of the Guard, plucked his
+sleeve.
+
+"What have you been saying to Foucauld, M. de Tavannes?" he muttered.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes," with a jealous glance, "you, M. le Comte."
+
+Count Hannibal looked at him with the sudden ferocity that made the man a
+proverb at Court.
+
+"What I chose, M. le Capitaine des Suisses!" he hissed.  And his hand
+closed like a vice on the other's wrist.  "What I chose, look you! And
+remember, another time, that I am not a Huguenot, and say what I please."
+
+"But there is great need of care," Nancay protested, stammering and
+flinching.  "And--and I have orders, M. le Comte."
+
+"Your orders are not for me," Tavannes answered, releasing his arm with a
+contemptuous gesture.  "And look you, man, do not cross my path to-night.
+You know our motto?  Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!  Be warned
+by it."
+
+Nancay scowled.  "But the priests say, 'If your hand offend you, cut it
+off!'" he muttered.
+
+Tavannes laughed, a sinister laugh.  "If you offend me I'll cut your
+throat," he said; and with no ceremony he went out, and dropped the
+curtain behind him.
+
+Nancay looked after him, his face pale with rage.  "Curse him!" he
+whispered, rubbing his wrist.  "If he were any one else I would teach
+him!  But he would as soon run you through in the presence as in the Pre
+aux Clercs!  And his brother, the Marshal, has the King's ear!  And
+Madame Catherine's too, which is worse!"
+
+He was still fuming, when an officer in the colours of Monsieur, the
+King's brother, entered hurriedly, and keeping his hand on the curtain,
+looked anxiously round the Chamber.  As soon as his eye found Nancay, his
+face cleared.
+
+"Have you the reckoning?" he muttered.
+
+"There are seventeen Huguenots in the palace besides their Highnesses,"
+Nancay replied, in the same cautious tone.  "Not counting two or three
+who are neither the one thing nor the other.  In addition, there are the
+two Montmorencies; but they are to go safe for fear of their brother, who
+is not in the trap.  He is too like his father, the old Bench-burner, to
+be lightly wronged!  And, besides, there is Pare, who is to go to his
+Majesty's closet as soon as the gates are shut.  If the King decides to
+save any one else, he will send him to his closet.  So 'tis all clear and
+arranged here.  If you are forward outside, it will be well!  Who deals
+with the gentleman with the tooth-pick?"
+
+"The Admiral?  Monsieur, Guise, and the Grand Prior; Cosseins and Besme
+have charge.  'Tis to be done first.  Then the Provost will raise the
+town.  He will have a body of stout fellows ready at three or four
+rendezvous, so that the fire may blaze up everywhere at once.  Marcel,
+the ex-provost, has the same commission south of the river.  Orders to
+light the town as for a frolic have been given, and the Halles will be
+ready."
+
+Nancay nodded, reflected a moment, and then with an involuntary shudder--
+
+"God!" he exclaimed, "it will shake the world!"
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Ay, will it not!"  His next words showed that he bore Tavannes' warning
+in mind.  "For me, my friend, I go in mail to-night," he said.  "There
+will be many a score paid before morning, besides his Majesty's.  And
+many a left-handed blow will be struck in the _melee_!"
+
+The other crossed himself.  "Grant none light here!" he said devoutly.
+And with a last look he nodded and went out.
+
+In the doorway he jostled a person who was in the act of entering.  It
+was M. de Tignonville, who, seeing Nancay at his elbow, saluted him, and
+stood looking round.  The young man's face was flushed, his eyes were
+bright with unwonted excitement.
+
+"M. de Rochefoucauld?" he asked eagerly.  "He has not left yet?"
+
+Nancay caught the thrill in his voice, and marked the young man's flushed
+face and altered bearing.  He noted, too, the crumpled paper he carried
+half-hidden in his hand; and the Captain's countenance grew dark.  He
+drew a step nearer, and his hand reached softly for his dagger.  But his
+voice, when he spoke, was smooth as the surface of the pleasure-loving
+Court, smooth as the externals of all things in Paris that summer
+evening.
+
+"He is here still," he said.  "Have you news, M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"News?"
+
+"For M. de Rochefoucauld?"
+
+Tignonville laughed.  "No," he said.  "I am here to see him to his
+lodging, that is all.  News, Captain?  What made you think so?"
+
+"That which you have in your hand," Nancay answered, his fears relieved.
+
+The young man blushed to the roots of his hair.  "It is not for him," he
+said.
+
+"I can see that, Monsieur," Nancay answered politely.  "He has his
+successes, but all the billets-doux do not go one way."
+
+The young man laughed, a conscious, flattered laugh.  He was handsome,
+with such a face as women love, but there was a lack of ease in the way
+he wore his Court suit.  It was a trifle finer, too, than accorded with
+Huguenot taste; or it looked the finer for the way he wore it, even as
+Teligny's and Foucauld's velvet capes and stiff brocades lost their
+richness and became but the adjuncts, fitting and graceful, of the men.
+Odder still, as Tignonville laughed, half hiding and half revealing the
+dainty scented paper in his hand, his clothes seemed smarter and he more
+awkward than usual.
+
+"It is from a lady," he admitted.  "But a bit of badinage, I assure you,
+nothing more!"
+
+"Understood!"  M. de Nancay murmured politely.  "I congratulate you."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I say I congratulate you!"
+
+"But it is nothing."
+
+"Oh, I understand.  And see, the King is about to rise.  Go forward,
+Monsieur," he continued benevolently.  "A young man should show himself.
+Besides, his Majesty likes you well," he added, with a leer.  He had an
+unpleasant sense of humour, had his Majesty's Captain of the Guard; and
+this evening somewhat more than ordinary on which to exercise it.
+
+Tignonville held too good an opinion of himself to suspect the other of
+badinage; and thus encouraged, he pushed his way to the front of the
+circle.  During his absence with his betrothed, the crowd in the Chamber
+had grown thin, the candles had burned an inch shorter in the sconces.
+But though many who had been there had left, the more select remained,
+and the King's return to his seat had given the company a fillip.  An air
+of feverish gaiety, common in the unhealthy life of the Court, prevailed.
+At a table abreast of the King, Montpensier and Marshal Cosse were dicing
+and disputing, with now a yell of glee, and now an oath, that betrayed
+which way fortune inclined.  At the back of the King's chair, Chicot, his
+gentleman-jester, hung over Charles's shoulder, now scanning his cards,
+and now making hideous faces that threw the on-lookers into fits of
+laughter.  Farther up the Chamber, at the end of the alcove, Marshal
+Tavannes--our Hannibal's brother--occupied a low stool, which was set
+opposite the open door of the closet.  Through this doorway a slender
+foot, silk-clad, shot now and again into sight; it came, it vanished, it
+came again, the gallant Marshal striving at each appearance to rob it of
+its slipper, a dainty jewelled thing of crimson velvet.  He failed
+thrice, a peal of laughter greeting each failure.  At the fourth essay,
+he upset his stool and fell to the floor, but held the slipper.  And not
+the slipper only, but the foot.  Amid a flutter of silken skirts and
+dainty laces--while the hidden beauty shrilly protested--he dragged first
+the ankle, and then a shapely leg into sight.  The circle applauded; the
+lady, feeling herself still drawn on, screamed loudly and more loudly.
+All save the King and his opponent turned to look.  And then the sport
+came to a sudden end.  A sinewy hand appeared, interposed, released; for
+an instant the dark, handsome face of Guise looked through the doorway.
+It was gone as soon as seen; it was there a second only.  But more than
+one recognised it, and wondered.  For was not the young Duke in evil
+odour with the King by reason of the attack on the Admiral?  And had he
+not been chased from Paris only that morning and forbidden to return?
+
+They were still wondering, still gazing, when abruptly--as he did all
+things--Charles thrust back his chair.
+
+"Foucauld, you owe me ten pieces!" he cried with glee, and he slapped the
+table.  "Pay, my friend; pay!"
+
+"To-morrow, little master; to-morrow!" Rochefoucauld answered in the same
+tone.  And he rose to his feet.
+
+"To-morrow!" Charles repeated.  "To-morrow?"  And on the word his jaw
+fell.  He looked wildly round.  His face was ghastly.
+
+"Well, sire, and why not?" Rochefoucauld answered in astonishment.  And
+in his turn he looked round, wondering; and a chill fell on him.  "Why
+not?" he repeated.
+
+For a moment no one answered him: the silence in the Chamber was intense.
+Where he looked, wherever he looked, he met solemn, wondering eyes, such
+eyes as gaze on men in their coffins.
+
+"What has come to you all?" he cried, with an effort.  "What is the jest,
+for faith, sire, I don't see it?"
+
+The King seemed incapable of speech, and it was Chicot who filled the
+gap.
+
+"It is pretty apparent," he said, with a rude laugh.  "The cock will lay
+and Foucauld will pay--to-morrow!"
+
+The young nobleman's colour rose; between him and the Gascon gentleman
+was no love lost.
+
+"There are some debts I pay to-day," he cried haughtily.  "For the rest,
+farewell my little master!  When one does not understand the jest it is
+time to be gone."
+
+He was halfway to the door, watched by all, when the King spoke.
+
+"Foucauld!" he cried, in an odd, strangled voice.  "Foucauld!"  And the
+Huguenot favourite turned back, wondering.  "One minute!" the King
+continued, in the same forced voice.  "Stay till morning--in my closet.
+It is late now.  We'll play away the rest of the night!"
+
+"Your Majesty must excuse me," Rochefoucauld answered frankly.  "I am
+dead asleep."
+
+"You can sleep in the Garde-Robe," the King persisted.
+
+"Thank you for nothing, sire!" was the gay answer.  "I know that bed!  I
+shall sleep longer and better in my own."
+
+The King shuddered, but strove to hide the movement under a shrug of his
+shoulders.  He turned away.
+
+"It is God's will!" he muttered.  He was white to the lips.
+
+Rochefoucauld did not catch the words.  "Good night, sire," he cried.
+"Farewell, little master."  And with a nod here and there, he passed to
+the door, followed by Mergey and Chamont, two gentlemen of his suite.
+
+Nancay raised the curtain with an obsequious gesture.  "Pardon me, M. le
+Comte," he said, "do you go to his Highness's?"
+
+"For a few minutes, Nancay."
+
+"Permit me to go with you.  The guards may be set."
+
+"Do so, my friend," Rochefoucauld answered.  "Ah, Tignonville, is it
+you?"
+
+"I am come to attend you to your lodging," the young man said.  And he
+ranged up beside the other, as, the curtain fallen behind them, they
+walked along the gallery.
+
+Rochefoucauld stopped and laid his hand on Tignonville's sleeve.
+
+"Thanks, dear lad," he said, "but I am going to the Princess Dowager's.
+Afterwards to his Highness's.  I may be detained an hour or more.  You
+will not like to wait so long."
+
+M. de Tignonville's face fell ludicrously.  "Well, no," he said.  "I--I
+don't think I could wait so long--to-night."
+
+"Then come to-morrow night," Rochefoucauld answered, with good nature.
+
+"With pleasure," the other cried heartily, his relief evident.
+"Certainly.  With pleasure."  And, nodding good night, they parted.
+
+While Rochefoucauld, with Nancay at his side and his gentlemen attending
+him, passed along the echoing and now empty gallery, the younger man
+bounded down the stairs to the great hall of the Caryatides, his face
+radiant.  He for one was not sleepy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  THE HOUSE NEXT THE GOLDEN MAID.
+
+
+We have it on record that before the Comte de la Rochefoucauld left the
+Louvre that night he received the strongest hints of the peril which
+threatened him; and at least one written warning was handed to him by a
+stranger in black, and by him in turn was communicated to the King of
+Navarre.  We are told further that when he took his final leave, about
+the hour of eleven, he found the courtyard brilliantly lighted, and the
+three companies of guards--Swiss, Scotch, and French--drawn up in ranked
+array from the door of the great hall to the gate which opened on the
+street.  But, the chronicler adds, neither this precaution, sinister as
+it appeared to some of his suite, nor the grave farewell which
+Rambouillet, from his post at the gate, took of one of his gentlemen,
+shook that chivalrous soul or sapped its generous confidence.
+
+M. de Tignonville was young and less versed in danger than the Governor
+of Rochelle; with him, had he seen so much, it might have been different.
+But he left the Louvre an hour earlier--at a time when the precincts of
+the palace, gloomy-seeming to us in the light cast by coming events, wore
+their wonted aspect.  His thoughts, moreover, as he crossed the
+courtyard, were otherwise employed.  So much so, indeed, that though he
+signed to his two servants to follow him, he seemed barely conscious what
+he was doing; nor did he shake off his reverie until he reached the
+corner of the Rue Baillet.  Here the voices of the Swiss who stood on
+guard opposite Coligny's lodgings, at the end of the Rue Bethizy, could
+be plainly heard.  They had kindled a fire in an iron basket set in the
+middle of the road, and knots of them were visible in the distance,
+moving to and fro about their piled arms.
+
+Tignonville paused before he came within the radius of the firelight,
+and, turning, bade his servants take their way home.  "I shall follow,
+but I have business first," he added curtly.
+
+The elder of the two demurred.  "The streets are not too safe," he said.
+"In two hours or less, my lord, it will be midnight.  And then--"
+
+"Go, booby; do you think I am a child?" his master retorted angrily.
+"I've my sword and can use it.  I shall not be long.  And do you hear,
+men, keep a still tongue, will you?"
+
+The men, country fellows, obeyed reluctantly, and with a full intention
+of sneaking after him the moment he had turned his back.  But he
+suspected them of this, and stood where he was until they had passed the
+fire, and could no longer detect his movements.  Then he plunged quickly
+into the Rue Baillet, gained through it the Rue du Roule, and traversing
+that also, turned to the right into the Rue Ferronerie, the main
+thoroughfare, east and west, of Paris.  Here he halted in front of the
+long, dark outer wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents, in which, across
+the tombstones and among the sepulchres of dead Paris, the living Paris
+of that day, bought and sold, walked, gossiped, and made love.
+
+About him things were to be seen that would have seemed stranger to him
+had he been less strange to the city.  From the quarter of the markets
+north of him, a quarter which fenced in the cemetery on two sides, the
+same dull murmur proceeded, which Mademoiselle de Vrillac had remarked an
+hour earlier.  The sky above the cemetery glowed with reflected light,
+the cause of which was not far to seek, for every window of the tall
+houses that overlooked it, and the huddle of booths about it, contributed
+a share of the illumination.  At an hour late even for Paris, an hour
+when honest men should have been sunk in slumber, this strange brilliance
+did for a moment perplex him; but the past week had been so full of
+fetes, of masques and frolics, often devised on the moment and dependent
+on the King's whim, that he set this also down to such a cause, and
+wondered no more.
+
+The lights in the houses did not serve the purpose he had in his mind,
+but beside the closed gate of the cemetery, and between two stalls, was a
+votive lamp burning before an image of the Mother and Child.  He crossed
+to this, and assuring himself by a glance to right and left that he stood
+in no danger from prowlers, he drew a note from his breast.  It had been
+slipped into his hand in the gallery before he saw Mademoiselle to her
+lodging; it had been in his possession barely an hour.  But brief as its
+contents were, and easily committed to memory, he had perused it thrice
+already.
+
+"At the house next the Golden Maid, Rue Cinq Diamants, an hour before
+midnight, you may find the door open should you desire to talk farther
+with C. St. L."
+
+As he read it for the fourth time the light of the lamp fell athwart his
+face; and even as his fine clothes had never seemed to fit him worse than
+when he faintly denied the imputations of gallantry launched at him by
+Nancay, so his features had never looked less handsome than they did now.
+The glow of vanity which warmed his cheek as he read the message, the
+smile of conceit which wreathed his lips, bespoke a nature not of the
+most noble; or the lamp did him less than justice.  Presently he kissed
+the note, and hid it.  He waited until the clock of St. Jacques struck
+the hour before midnight; and then moving forward, he turned to the right
+by way of the narrow neck leading to the Rue Lombard.  He walked in the
+kennel here, his sword in his hand and his eyes looking to right and
+left; for the place was notorious for robberies.  But though he saw more
+than one figure lurking in a doorway or under the arch that led to a
+passage, it vanished on his nearer approach.  In less than a minute he
+reached the southern end of the street that bore the odd title of the
+Five Diamonds.
+
+Situate in the crowded quarter of the butchers, and almost in the shadow
+of their famous church, this street--which farther north was continued in
+the Rue Quimcampoix--presented in those days a not uncommon mingling of
+poverty and wealth.  On one side of the street a row of lofty gabled
+houses, built under Francis the First, sheltered persons of good
+condition; on the other, divided from these by the width of the road and
+a reeking kennel, a row of peat-houses, the hovels of cobblers and
+sausage-makers, leaned against shapeless timber houses which tottered
+upwards in a medley of sagging roofs and bulging gutters.  Tignonville
+was strange to the place, and nine nights out of ten he would have been
+at a disadvantage.  But, thanks to the tapers that to-night shone in many
+windows, he made out enough to see that he need search only the one side;
+and with a beating heart he passed along the row of newer houses, looking
+eagerly for the sign of the Golden Maid.
+
+He found it at last; and then for a moment he stood puzzled.  The note
+said, next door to the Golden Maid, but it did not say on which side.  He
+scrutinised the nearer house, but he saw nothing to determine him; and he
+was proceeding to the farther, when he caught sight of two men, who,
+ambushed behind a horse-block on the opposite side of the roadway, seemed
+to be watching his movements.  Their presence flurried him; but much to
+his relief his next glance at the houses showed him that the door of the
+farther one was unlatched.  It stood slightly ajar, permitting a beam of
+light to escape into the street.
+
+He stepped quickly to it--the sooner he was within the house the
+better--pushed the door open and entered.  As soon as he was inside he
+tried to close the entrance behind him, but he found he could not; the
+door would not shut.  After a brief trial he abandoned the attempt and
+passed quickly on, through a bare lighted passage which led to the foot
+of a staircase, equally bare.  He stood at this point an instant and
+listened, in the hope that Madame's maid would come to him.  At first he
+heard nothing save his own breathing; then a gruff voice from above
+startled him.
+
+"This way, Monsieur," it said.  "You are early, but not too soon!"
+
+So Madame trusted her footman!  M. de Tignonville shrugged his shoulders;
+but after all, it was no affair of his, and he went up.  Halfway to the
+top, however, he stood, an oath on his lips.  Two men had entered by the
+open door below--even as he had entered!  And as quietly!
+
+The imprudence of it!  The imprudence of leaving the door so that it
+could not be closed!  He turned, and descended to meet them, his teeth
+set, his hand on his sword, one conjecture after another whirling in his
+brain.  Was he beset?  Was it a trap?  Was it a rival?  Was it chance?
+Two steps he descended; and then the voice he had heard before cried
+again, but more imperatively--
+
+"No, Monsieur, this way!  Did you not hear me?  This way, and be quick,
+if you please.  By-and-by there will be a crowd, and then the more we
+have dealt with the better!"
+
+He knew now that he had made a mistake, that he had entered the wrong
+house; and naturally his impulse was to continue his descent and secure
+his retreat.  But the pause had brought the two men who had entered face
+to face with him, and they showed no signs of giving way.  On the
+contrary.
+
+"The room is above, Monsieur," the foremost said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, and with a slight salutation.  "After you, if you please," and he
+signed to him to return.
+
+He was a burly man, grim and truculent in appearance, and his follower
+was like him.  Tignonville hesitated, then turned and ascended.  But as
+soon as he had reached the landing where they could pass him, he turned
+again.
+
+"I have made a mistake, I think," he said.  "I have entered the wrong
+house."
+
+"Are you for the house next the Golden Maid, Monsieur?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Rue Cinq Diamants, Quarter of the Boucherie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No mistake, then," the stout man replied firmly.  "You are early, that
+is all.  You have arms, I see.  Maillard!"--to the person whose voice
+Tignonville had heard at the head of the stairs--"A white sleeve, and a
+cross for Monsieur's hat, and his name on the register.  Come, make a
+beginning!  Make a beginning, man."
+
+"To be sure, Monsieur.  All is ready."
+
+"Then lose no time, I say.  Here are others, also early in the good
+cause.  Gentlemen, welcome!  Welcome all who are for the true faith!
+Death to the heretics!  'Kill, and no quarter!' is the word to-night!"
+
+"Death to the heretics!" the last comers cried in chorus.  "Kill and no
+quarter!  At what hour, M. le Prevot?"
+
+"At daybreak," the Provost answered importantly.  "But have no fear, the
+tocsin will sound.  The King and our good man M. de Guise have all in
+hand.  A white sleeve, a white cross, and a sharp knife shall rid Paris
+of the vermin!  Gentlemen of the quarter, the word of the night is 'Kill,
+and no quarter!  Death to the Huguenots!'"
+
+"Death!  Death to the Huguenots!  Kill, and no quarter!" A dozen--the
+room was beginning to fill--waved their weapons and echoed the cry.
+
+Tignonville had been fortunate enough to apprehend the position--and the
+peril in which he stood--before Maillard advanced to him bearing a white
+linen sleeve.  In the instant of discovery his heart had stood a moment,
+the blood had left his cheeks; but with some faults, he was no coward,
+and he managed to hide his emotion.  He held out his left arm, and
+suffered the beadle to pass the sleeve over it and to secure the white
+linen above the elbow.  Then at a gesture he gave up his velvet cap, and
+saw it decorated with a white cross of the same material.
+
+"Now the register, Monsieur," Maillard continued briskly; and waving him
+in the direction of a clerk, who sat at the end of the long table, having
+a book and a ink-horn before him, he turned to the next comer.
+
+Tignonville would fain have avoided the ordeal of the register, but the
+clerk's eye was on him.  He had been fortunate so far, but he knew that
+the least breath of suspicion would destroy him, and summoning his wits
+together he gave his name in a steady voice.  "Anne Desmartins."  It was
+his mother's maiden name, and the first that came into his mind.
+
+"Of Paris?"
+
+"Recently; by birth, of the Limousin."
+
+"Good, Monsieur," the clerk answered, writing in the name.  And he turned
+to the next.  "And you, my friend?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  THE EVE OF THE FEAST.
+
+
+It was Tignonville's salvation that the men who crowded the long white-
+walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring lights,
+were of all classes.  There were butchers, natives of the surrounding
+quarter whom the scent of blood had drawn from their lairs; and there
+were priests with hatchet faces, who whispered in the butchers' ears.
+There were gentlemen of the robe, and plain mechanics, rich merchants in
+their gowns, and bare-armed ragpickers, sleek choristers, and shabby led-
+captains; but differ as they might in other points, in one thing all were
+alike.  From all, gentle or simple, rose the same cry for blood, the same
+aspiration to be first equipped for the fray.  In one corner a man of
+rank stood silent and apart, his hand on his sword, the working of his
+face alone betraying the storm that reigned within.  In another, a Norman
+horse-dealer talked in low whispers with two thieves.  In a third, a gold-
+wire drawer addressed an admiring group from the Sorbonne; and meantime
+the middle of the floor grew into a seething mass of muttering, scowling
+men, through whom the last comers, thrust as they might, had much ado to
+force their way.
+
+And from all under the low ceiling rose a ceaseless hum, though none
+spoke loud.  "Kill! kill! kill!" was the burden; the accompaniment such
+profanities and blasphemies as had long disgraced the Paris pulpits, and
+day by day had fanned the bigotry--already at a white heat--of the
+Parisian populace.  Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would
+fain have closed his ears.  But for his life he dared not.  And presently
+a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted
+hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone.
+
+"Are you sharp, noble sir?" he asked, with a leer.  "Are you sharp?  It's
+surprising how the edge goes on the bone.  A cut and thrust?  Well, every
+man to his taste.  But give me a broad butcher's knife and I'll ask no
+help, be it man, woman, or child!"
+
+A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened.
+
+"But the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?" he said.  And he
+looked to Tignonville to join in the jest.
+
+"Ay, give me a white throat for choice!" the cripple answered, with
+horrible zest.  "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night!  Lord,
+I think I hear them squeal!  You don't need it, sir?" he continued, again
+proffering the whetstone.  "No?  Then I'll give my blade another whet, in
+the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good Father Pezelay!"
+
+"Ay, and give me a turn!" the lean man cried, proffering his weapon.  "May
+I die if I do not kill one of the accursed for every finger of my hands!"
+
+"And toe of my feet!" the cripple answered, not to be outdone.  "And toe
+of my feet!  A full score!"
+
+"'Tis according to your sins!" the other, who had something of the air of
+a Churchman, answered.  "The more heretics killed, the more sins
+forgiven.  Remember that, brother, and spare not if your soul be
+burdened!  They blaspheme God and call Him paste!  In the paste of their
+own blood," he continued ferociously, "I will knead them and roll them
+out, saith the good Father Pezelay, my master!"
+
+The cripple crossed himself.  "Whom God keep," he said.  "He is a good
+man.  But you are looking ill, noble sir?" he continued, peering
+curiously at the young Huguenot.
+
+"'Tis the heat," Tignonville muttered.  "The night is stifling, and the
+lights make it worse.  I will go nearer the door."
+
+He hoped to escape them; he had some hope even of escaping from the room
+and giving the alarm.  But when he had forced his way to the threshold,
+he found it guarded by two pikemen; and glancing back to see if his
+movements were observed--for he knew that his agitation might have
+awakened suspicion--he found that the taller of the two whom he had left,
+the black-garbed man with the hungry face, was watching him a-tiptoe,
+over the shoulders of the crowd.
+
+With that, and the sense of his impotence, the lights began to swim
+before his eyes.  The catastrophe that overhung his party, the fate so
+treacherously prepared for all whom he loved and all with whom his
+fortunes were bound up, confused his brain almost to delirium.  He strove
+to think, to calculate chances, to imagine some way in which he might
+escape from the room, or from a window might cry the alarm.  But he could
+not bring his mind to a point.  Instead, in lightning flashes he foresaw
+what must happen: his betrothed in the hands of the murderers; the fair
+face that had smiled on him frozen with terror; brave men, the fighters
+of Montauban, the defenders of Angely, strewn dead through the dark lanes
+of the city.  And now a gust of passion, and now a shudder of fear,
+seized him; and in any other assembly his agitation must have led to
+detection.  But in that room were many twitching faces and trembling
+hands.  Murder, cruel, midnight, and most foul, wrung even from the
+murderers her toll of horror.  While some, to hide the nervousness they
+felt, babbled of what they would do, others betrayed by the intentness
+with which they awaited the signal, the dreadful anticipations that
+possessed their souls.
+
+Before he had formed any plan, a movement took place near the door.  The
+stairs shook beneath the sudden trampling of feet, a voice cried "De par
+le Roi!  De par le Roi!" and the babel of the room died down.  The throng
+swayed and fell back on either hand, and Marshal Tavannes entered,
+wearing half armour, with a white sash; he was followed by six or eight
+gentlemen in like guise.  Amid cries of "Jarnac!  Jarnac!"--for to him
+the credit of that famous fight, nominally won by the King's brother, was
+popularly given--he advanced up the room, met the Provost of the
+merchants, and began to confer with him.  Apparently he asked the latter
+to select some men who could be trusted on a special mission, for the
+Provost looked round and beckoned to his side one or two of higher rank
+than the herd, and then one or two of the most truculent aspect.
+
+Tignonville trembled lest he should be singled out.  He had hidden
+himself as well as he could at the rear of the crowd by the door; but his
+dress, so much above the common, rendered him conspicuous.  He fancied
+that the Provost's eye ranged the crowd for him; and to avoid it and
+efface himself he moved a pace to his left.
+
+The step was fatal.  It saved him from the Provost, but it brought him
+face to face and eye to eye with Count Hannibal, who stood in the first
+rank at his brother's elbow.  Tavannes stared an instant as if he doubted
+his eyesight.  Then, as doubt gave slow place to certainty, and surprise
+to amazement, he smiled.  And after a moment he looked another way.
+
+Tignonville's heart gave a great bump and seemed to stand still.  The
+lights whirled before his eyes, there was a roaring in his ears.  He
+waited for the word that should denounce him.  It did not come.  And
+still it did not come; and Marshal Tavannes was turning.  Yes, turning,
+and going; the Provost, bowing low, was attending him to the door; his
+suite were opening on either side to let him pass.  And Count Hannibal?
+Count Hannibal was following also, as if nothing had occurred.  As if he
+had seen nothing!
+
+The young man caught his breath.  Was it possible that he had imagined
+the start of recognition, the steady scrutiny, the sinister smile?  No;
+for as Tavannes followed the others, he hung an instant on his heel,
+their eyes met again, and once more he smiled.  In the next breath he was
+gone through the doorway, his spurs rang on the stairs; and the babel of
+the crowd, checked by the great man's presence, broke out anew, and
+louder.
+
+Tignonville shuddered.  He was saved as by a miracle; saved, he did not
+know how.  But the respite, though its strangeness diverted his thoughts
+for a while, brought short relief.  The horrors which impended over
+others surged afresh into his mind, and filled him with a maddening sense
+of impotence.  To be one hour, only one short half-hour without!  To run
+through the sleeping streets, and scream in the dull ears which a King's
+flatteries had stopped as with wool!  To go up and down and shake into
+life the guests whose royal lodgings daybreak would turn to a shambles
+reeking with their blood!  They slept, the gentle Teligny, the brave
+Pardaillan, the gallant Rochefoucauld, Piles the hero of St. Jean, while
+the cruel city stirred rustling about them, and doom crept whispering to
+the door.  They slept, they and a thousand others, gentle and simple,
+young and old; while the half-mad Valois shifted between two opinions,
+and the Italian woman, accursed daughter of an accursed race, cried,
+"Hark!" at her window, and looked eastwards for the dawn.
+
+And the women?  The woman he was to marry?  And the others?  In an access
+of passion he thrust aside those who stood between, he pushed his way,
+disregarding complaints, disregarding opposition, to the door.  But the
+pikes lay across it, and he could not utter a syllable to save his life.
+He would have flung himself on the doorkeepers, for he was losing control
+of himself; but as he drew back for the spring, a hand clutched his
+sleeve, and a voice he loathed hummed in his ear.
+
+"No, fair play, noble sir; fair play!" the cripple Jehan muttered,
+forcibly drawing him aside.  "All start together, and it's no man's loss.
+But if there is any little business," he continued, lowering his tone and
+peering with a cunning look into the other's face, "of your own, noble
+sir, or your friends', anything or anybody you want despatched, count on
+me.  It were better, perhaps, you didn't appear in it yourself, and a man
+you can trust--"
+
+"What do you mean?" the young man cried, recoiling from him.
+
+"No need to look surprised, noble sir," the lean man, who had joined
+them, answered in a soothing tone.  "Who kills to-night does God service,
+and who serves God much may serve himself a little.  'Thou shalt not
+muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,' says good Father Pezelay."
+
+"Hear, hear!" the cripple chimed in eagerly, his impatience such that he
+danced on his toes.  "He preaches as well as the good father his master!
+So frankly, noble sir, what is it?  What is it?  A woman grown ugly?  A
+rich man grown old, with perchance a will in his chest?  Or a young heir
+that stands in my lord's way?  Whichever it be, or whatever it be, trust
+me and our friend here, and my butcher's gully shall cut the knot."
+
+Tignonville shook his head.
+
+"But something there is," the lean man persisted obstinately; and he cast
+a suspicious glance at Tignonville's clothes.  It was evident that the
+two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there.  "Have the
+dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers' shops on the
+bridge to fill your purse again?  If so, take my word, it were better to
+go three than one, and we'll enlist."
+
+"Ay, we know shops on the bridge where you can plunge your arm elbow-deep
+in gold," the cripple muttered, his eyes sparkling greedily.  "There's
+Baillet's, noble sir!  There's a shop for you!  And there's the man's
+shop who works for the King.  He's lame like me.  And I know the way to
+all.  Oh, it will be a merry night if they ring before the dawn.  It must
+be near daybreak now.  And what's that?"
+
+Ay, what was it?  A score of voices called for silence; a breathless hush
+fell on the crowd.  A moment the fiercest listened, with parted lips and
+starting eyes.  Then, "It was the bell!" cried one, "let us out!"  "It
+was not!" cried another.  "It was a pistol shot!"  "Anyhow let us out!"
+the crowd roared in chorus; "let us out!"  And they pressed in a furious
+mass towards the door, as if they would force it, signal or no signal.
+
+But the pikemen stood fast, and the throng, checked in their first rush,
+turned on one another, and broke into wrangling and disputing; boasting,
+and calling Heaven and the saints to witness how thoroughly, how
+pitilessly, how remorselessly they would purge Paris of this leprosy when
+the signal did sound.  Until again above the babel a man cried "Silence!"
+and again they listened.  And this time, dulled by walls and distance,
+but unmistakable by the ears of fear or hate, the heavy note of a bell
+came to them on the hot night air.  It was the boom, sullen and menacing,
+of the death signal.
+
+The doorkeepers lowered their pikes, and with a wild rush, as of wolves
+swarming on their prey, the band stormed the door, and thrust and
+struggled and battled a way down the narrow staircase, and along the
+narrow passage.  "A bas les Huguenots!  Mort aux Huguenots!" they
+shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands, viler faces,
+they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour to the
+boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned the streets
+of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty.  For as it was here, so it was
+in a dozen other quarters.
+
+Quickly as they streamed out--and to have issued more quickly would have
+been impossible--fiercely as they pushed and fought and clove their way,
+Tignonville was of the foremost.  And for a moment, seeing the street
+clear before him and almost empty, the Huguenot thought that he might do
+something.  He might outstrip the stream of rapine, he might carry the
+alarm; at worst he might reach his betrothed before harm befell her.  But
+when he had sped fifty yards, his heart sank.  True, none passed him; but
+under the spell of the alarm-bell the stones themselves seemed to turn to
+men.  Houses, courts, alleys, the very churches vomited men.  In a
+twinkling the street was alive with men, roared with them as with a
+rushing tide, gleamed with their lights and weapons, thundered with the
+volume of their thousand voices.  He was no longer ahead, men were
+running before him, behind him, on his right hand and on his left.  In
+every side-street, every passage, men were running; and not men only, but
+women, children, furious creatures without age or sex.  And all the time
+the bell tolled overhead, tolled faster and faster, and louder and
+louder; and shots and screams, and the clash of arms, and the fall of
+strong doors began to swell the maelstrom of sound.
+
+He was in the Rue St. Honore now, and speeding westward.  But the flood
+still rose with him, and roared abreast of him.  Nay, it outstripped him.
+When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a hundred
+paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of people moving
+slowly to meet him.  In the heart of the press the light of a dozen
+torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed; whose eyes, as
+they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the rabble about them,
+never left the gabled roofs on their right.  On these from time to time a
+white-clad figure showed itself, and passed from chimney-stack to chimney-
+stack, or, stooping low, ran along the parapet.  Every time that this
+happened, the men on horseback pointed upwards and the mob foamed with
+rage.
+
+Tignonville groaned, but he could not help.  Unable to go forward, he
+turned, and with others hurrying, shouting, and brandishing weapons, he
+pressed into the Rue du Roule, passed through it, and gained the Bethizy.
+But here, as he might have foreseen, all passage was barred at the Hotel
+Ponthieu by a horde of savages, who danced and yelled and sang songs
+round the Admiral's body, which lay in the middle of the way; while to
+right and left men were bursting into houses and forcing new victims into
+the street.  The worst had happened there, and he turned panting,
+regained the Rue St. Honore, and, crossing it and turning left-handed,
+darted through side streets until he came again into the main
+thoroughfare a little beyond the Croix du Tiroir, that marked the corner
+of Mademoiselle's house.
+
+Here his last hope left him.  The street swarmed with bands of men
+hurrying to and fro as in a sacked city.  The scum of the Halles, the
+rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there
+swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets
+reflected the glare of a hundred torches.  At one time and within sight,
+three or four houses were being stormed.  On every side rose
+heart-rending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests,
+with cries of "To the river!"  The most cruel of cities had burst its
+bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine ran
+red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets, men, for
+fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges with poles
+and boat-hooks.
+
+All this Tignonville saw, though his eyes, leaping the turmoil, looked
+only to the door at which he had left Mademoiselle a few hours earlier.
+There a crowd of men pressed and struggled; but from the spot where he
+stood he could see no more.  That was enough, however.  Rage nerved him,
+and despair; his world was dying round him.  If he could not save her he
+would avenge her.  Recklessly he plunged into the tumult; blade in hand,
+with vigorous blows he thrust his way through, his white sleeve and the
+white cross in his hat gaining him passage until he reached the fringe of
+the band who beset the door.  Here his first attempt to pass failed; and
+he might have remained hampered by the crowd, if a squad of archers had
+not ridden up.  As they spurred to the spot, heedless over whom they
+rode, he clutched a stirrup, and was borne with them into the heart of
+the crowd.  In a twinkling he stood on the threshold of the house, face
+to face and foot to foot with Count Hannibal, who stood also on the
+threshold, but with his back to the door, which, unbarred and unbolted,
+gaped open behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  ROUGH WOOING.
+
+
+The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night.  The
+rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword.  To
+strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him
+was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on the
+instant, the Marshal's brother had said his last word in the world.
+
+Yet as he stood there, a head above the crowd, he seemed unconscious
+alike of Tignonville and the point that all but pricked his breast.  Swart
+and grim-visaged, his harsh features distorted by the glare which shone
+upon him, he looked beyond the Huguenot to the sea of tossing arms and
+raging faces that surged about the saddles of the horsemen.  It was to
+these he spoke.
+
+"Begone, dogs!" he cried, in a voice that startled the nearest, "or I
+will whip you away with my stirrup-leathers!  Do you hear?  Begone!  This
+house is not for you!  Burn, kill, plunder where you will, but go hence!"
+
+"But 'tis on the list!" one of the wretches yelled.  "'Tis on the list!"
+And he pushed forward until he stood at Tignonville's elbow.
+
+"And has no cross!" shrieked another, thrusting himself forward in his
+turn.  "See you, let us by, whoever you are!  In the King's name, kill!
+It has no cross!"
+
+"Then," Tavannes thundered, "will I nail you for a cross to the front of
+it!  No cross, say you?  I will make one of you, foul crow!"
+
+And as he spoke, his arm shot out; the man recoiled, his fellow likewise.
+But one of the mounted archers took up the matter.
+
+"Nay, but, my lord," he said--he knew Tavannes--"it is the King's will
+there be no favour shown to-night to any, small or great.  And this house
+is registered, and is full of heretics."
+
+"And has no cross!" the rabble urged in chorus.  And they leapt up and
+down in their impatience, and to see the better.  "And has no cross!"
+they persisted.  They could understand that.  Of what use crosses, if
+they were not to kill where there was no cross?  Daylight was not
+plainer.  Tavannes' face grew dark, and he shook his finger at the archer
+who had spoken.
+
+"Rogue," he cried, "does the King's will run here only?  Are there no
+other houses to sack or men to kill, that you must beard me?  And favour?
+You will have little of mine, if you do not budge and take your vile tail
+with you!  Off!  Or must I cry 'Tavannes!' and bid my people sweep you
+from the streets?"
+
+The foremost rank hesitated, awed by his manner and his name; while the
+rearmost, attracted by the prospect of easier pillage, had gone off
+already.  The rest wavered; and another and another broke away.  The
+archer who had put himself forward saw which way the wind was blowing,
+and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, my lord, as you will," he said sullenly.  "All the same I would
+advise you to close the door and bolt and bar.  We shall not be the last
+to call to-day."  And he turned his horse in ill-humour, and forced it,
+snorting and plunging, through the crowd.
+
+"Bolt and bar?" Tavannes cried after him in fury.  "See you my answer to
+that!"  And turning on the threshold, "Within there!" he cried.  "Open
+the shutters and set lights, and the table!  Light, I say; light!  And
+lay on quickly, if you value your lives!  And throw open, for I sup with
+your mistress to-night, if it rain blood without!  Do you hear me,
+rogues?  Set on!"
+
+He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again to
+the street.  He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in
+Tignonville's face, he laughed aloud.
+
+"Does Monsieur sup with us?" he said.  "To complete the party?  Or will
+he choose to sup with our friends yonder?  It is for him to say.  I
+confess, for my part," with an awful smile, "their hospitality seems a
+trifle crude, and boisterous."
+
+Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered.  The same horde which had so
+lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the street,
+and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of
+tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose
+the screams of a creature in torture.  So terrible were the sounds that
+Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron
+heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.
+
+For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.
+
+"You'll join us, I think?" he said, with an undisguised sneer.  "Then,
+after you, Monsieur.  They are opening the shutters.  Doubtless the table
+is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us.  After you, Monsieur, if you
+please.  A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this
+house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home!  Now, we have changed
+places."
+
+Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in
+his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion
+along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had
+seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed.  A
+dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment.  What the
+house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the
+table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which
+extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the
+height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been
+removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers.  To such eyes of
+passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming
+weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout
+Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange
+indeed!
+
+To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a
+dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who
+dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with
+blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a
+corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of
+waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.
+
+When he did speak it was to count the servants.  "One, two, three, four,
+five," he said.  "And two of them women.  Mademoiselle is but poorly
+attended.  Are there not"--and he turned to her--"some lacking?"
+
+The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued.  The third time--
+
+"Two went out," she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, "and have not
+returned."
+
+"And have not returned?" he answered, raising his eyebrows.  "Then I fear
+we must not wait for them.  We might wait long!"  And turning sharply to
+the panic-stricken servants, "Go you to your places!  Do you not see that
+Mademoiselle waits to be served?"
+
+The girl shuddered and spoke.
+
+"Do you wish me," she muttered, in the same strangled tone, "to play this
+farce--to the end?"
+
+"The end may be better, Mademoiselle, than you think," he answered,
+bowing.  And then to the miserable servants, who hung back afraid to
+leave the shelter of their mistress's skirts, "To your places!" he cried.
+"Set Mademoiselle's chair.  Are you so remiss on other days?  If so,"
+with a look of terrible meaning, "you will be the less loss!  Now,
+Mademoiselle, may I have the honour?  And when we are at table we can
+talk."
+
+He extended his hand, and, obedient to his gesture, she moved to the
+place at the head of the table, but without letting her fingers come into
+contact with his.  He gave no sign that he noticed this, but he strode to
+the place on her right, and signed to Tignonville to take that on her
+left.
+
+"Will you not be seated?" he continued.  For she kept her feet.
+
+She turned her head stiffly, until for the first time her eyes looked
+into his.  A shudder more violent than the last shook her.
+
+"Had you not better--kill us at once?" she whispered.  The blood had
+forsaken even her lips.  Her face was the face of a statue--white,
+beautiful, lifeless.
+
+"I think not," he said gravely.  "Be seated, and let us hope for the
+best.  And you, sir," he continued, turning to Carlat, "serve your
+mistress with wine.  She needs it."
+
+The steward filled for her, and then for each of the men, his shaking
+hand spilling as much as it poured.  Nor was this strange.  Above the din
+and uproar of the street, above the crash of distant doors, above the
+tocsin that still rang from the reeling steeple of St. Germain's, the
+great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its note of
+doom upon the town.  A woman crouching at the end of the chamber burst
+into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes' terrible eye,
+was mute again.
+
+Tignonville found voice at last.  "Have they--killed the Admiral?" he
+muttered, his eyes on the table.
+
+"M. Coligny?  An hour ago."
+
+"And Teligny?"
+
+"Him also."
+
+"M. de Rochefoucauld?"
+
+"They are dealing with M. le Comte now, I believe," Tavannes answered.
+"He had his chance and cast it away."  And he began to eat.
+
+The man at the table shuddered.  The woman continued to look before her,
+but her lips moved as if she prayed.  Suddenly a rush of feet, a roar of
+voices surged past the window; for a moment the glare of the torches,
+which danced ruddily on the walls of the room, showed a severed head
+borne above the multitude on a pike.  Mademoiselle, with a low cry, made
+an effort to rise, but Count Hannibal grasped her wrist, and she sank
+back half fainting.  Then the nearer clamour sank a little, and the
+bells, unchallenged, flung their iron tongues above the maddened city.  In
+the east the dawn was growing; soon its grey light would fall on cold
+hearths, on battered doors and shattered weapons, on hordes of wretches
+drunk with greed and hate.
+
+When he could be heard, "What are you going to do with us?" the man asked
+hoarsely.
+
+"That depends," Count Hannibal replied, after a moment's thought.
+
+"On what?"
+
+"On Mademoiselle de Vrillac."
+
+The other's eyes gleamed with passion.  He leaned forward.
+
+"What has she to do with it?" he cried.  And he stood up and sat down
+again in a breath.
+
+Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with
+his harsh visage.
+
+"I will answer that question by another question," he replied.  "How many
+are there in the house, my friend?"
+
+"You can count."
+
+Tavannes counted again.  "Seven?" he said.  Tignonville nodded
+impatiently.
+
+"Seven lives?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, Monsieur, you know the King's will?"
+
+"I can guess it," the other replied furiously.  And he cursed the King,
+and the King's mother, calling her Jezebel.
+
+"You can guess it?" Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as if
+that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold blood,
+"Nay, you know it!  You heard it from the archer at the door.  You heard
+him say, 'No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for child.  So
+says the King.'  You heard it, but you fence with me.  Foucauld, with
+whom his Majesty played to-night, hand to hand and face to face--Foucauld
+is dead!  And you think to live?  You?" he continued, lashing himself
+into passion.  "I know not by what chance you came where I saw you an
+hour gone, nor by what chance you came by that and that"--pointing with
+accusing finger to the badges the Huguenot wore.  "But this I know!  I
+have but to cry your name from yonder casement, nay, Monsieur, I have but
+to stand aside when the mob go their rounds from house to house, as they
+will go presently, and you will perish as certainly as you have hitherto
+escaped!"
+
+For the second time Mademoiselle turned and looked at him.
+
+"Then," she whispered, with white lips, "to what end this--mockery?"
+
+"To the end that seven lives may be saved, Mademoiselle," he answered,
+bowing.
+
+"At a price?" she muttered.
+
+"At a price," he answered.  "A price which women do not find it hard to
+pay--at Court.  'Tis paid every day for pleasure or a whim, for rank or
+the _entree_, for robes and gewgaws.  Few, Mademoiselle, are privileged
+to buy a life; still fewer, seven!"
+
+She began to tremble.  "I would rather die--seven times!" she cried, her
+voice quivering.  And she tried to rise, but sat down again.
+
+"And these?" he said, indicating the servants.
+
+"Far, far rather!" she repeated passionately.
+
+"And Monsieur?  And Monsieur?" he urged with stern persistence, while his
+eyes passed lightly from her to Tignonville and back to her again, their
+depths inscrutable.  "If you love Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and I believe
+you do--"
+
+"I can die with him!" she cried.
+
+"And he with you?"
+
+She writhed in her chair.
+
+"And he with you?" Count Hannibal repeated, with emphasis; and he thrust
+forward his head.  "For that is the question.  Think, think,
+Mademoiselle.  It is in my power to save from death him whom you love; to
+save you; to save this _canaille_, if it so please you.  It is in my
+power to save him, to save you, to save all; and I will save all--at a
+price!  If, on the other hand, you deny me that price, I will as
+certainly leave all to perish, as perish they will, before the sun that
+is now rising sets to-night!"
+
+Mademoiselle looked straight before her, the flicker of a dreadful
+prescience in her eyes.
+
+"And the price?" she muttered.  "The price?"
+
+"You, Mademoiselle."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you!  Nay, why fence with me?" he continued gently.  "You knew it,
+you have said it.  You have read it in my eyes these seven days."
+
+She did not speak, or move, or seem to breathe.  As he said, she had
+foreseen, she had known the answer.  But Tignonville, it seemed, had not.
+He sprang to his feet.
+
+"M. de Tavannes," he cried, "you are a villain!"
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"You are a villain!  But you shall pay for this!" the young man continued
+vehemently.  "You shall not leave this room alive!  You shall pay for
+this insult!"
+
+"Insult?" Tavannes answered in apparent surprise; and then, as if
+comprehension broke upon him, "Ah! Monsieur mistakes me," he said, with a
+broad sweep of the hand.  "And Mademoiselle also, perhaps?  Oh! be
+content, she shall have bell, book, and candle; she shall be tied as
+tight as Holy Church can tie her!  Or, if she please, and one survive,
+she shall have a priest of her own church--you call it a church?  She
+shall have whichever of the two will serve her better.  'Tis one to me!
+But for paying me, Monsieur," he continued, with irony in voice and
+manner; "when, I pray you?  In Eternity?  For if you refuse my offer, you
+have done with time.  Now?  I have but to sound this whistle"--he touched
+a silver whistle which hung at his breast--"and there are those within
+hearing will do your business before you make two passes.  Dismiss the
+notion, sir, and understand.  You are in my power.  Paris runs with
+blood, as noble as yours, as innocent as hers.  If you would not perish
+with the rest, decide!  And quickly!  For what you have seen are but the
+forerunners, what you have heard are but the gentle whispers that predict
+the gale.  Do not parley too long; so long that even I may no longer save
+you."
+
+"I would rather die!" Mademoiselle moaned, her face covered.  "I would
+rather die!"
+
+"And see him die?" he answered quietly.  "And see these die?  Think,
+think, child!"
+
+"You will not do it!" she gasped.  She shook from head to foot.
+
+"I shall do nothing," he answered firmly.  "I shall but leave you to your
+fate, and these to theirs.  In the King's teeth I dare save my wife and
+her people; but no others.  You must choose--and quickly."
+
+One of the frightened women--it was Mademoiselle's tiring-maid, a girl
+called Javette--made a movement, as if to throw herself at her mistress's
+feet.  Tignonville drove her to her place with a word.  He turned to
+Count Hannibal.
+
+"But, M. le Comte," he said, "you must be mad!  Mad, to wish to marry her
+in this way!  You do not love her.  You do not want her.  What is she to
+you more than other women?"
+
+"What is she to you more than other women?" Tavannes retorted, in a tone
+so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch of
+colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them, the
+prize of the contest.  "What is she more to you than other women?  Is she
+more?  And yet--you want her!"
+
+"She is more to me," Tignonville answered.
+
+"Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning.  "Is she?  But
+we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise.
+Enough for you that I _do_ want her.  Enough for you that I _will_ have
+her.  She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes--or
+I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!"
+
+"Ah, God!" she moaned.  "The willing wife!"
+
+"Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly.  "Or no man's
+wife!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?
+
+
+In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than
+the truth.  A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into
+the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder
+than the importunate clangour of the bells.  Behind its moving masses the
+dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St.
+Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in
+its cruel work.  The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the
+stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in
+twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts,
+heralded the coming of the crowd.  But the dawn was growing, the sun was
+about to rise.  Soon the day would be here, giving up the lurking
+fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and stamping with
+legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.
+
+And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy, escape
+more hard.  Already they were killing on the bridge where the rich
+goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river.  They were killing at the
+Louvre, in the courtyard under the King's eyes, and below the windows of
+the Medicis.  They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denis and St.
+Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelled the hand.
+From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath, and
+foreboding.  From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from the
+Boucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretched
+creatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and where they
+listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of the armed
+bands whose business it was to go from street to street, and house to
+house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris the high justice
+of the King.
+
+It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street while
+Tavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerful
+advocate.  As the deep "A bas!  A bas!" rolled like thunder along the
+fronts of the houses, as the more strident "Tuez!  Tuez!" drew nearer and
+nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flicker on the
+shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way.  Madame Carlat,
+shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; the tiring-maid, Javette,
+flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle's knees, and, writhing herself
+about them, shrieked to her to save her, only to save her!  One of the
+men moved forward on impulse, as if he would close the shutters; and only
+old Carlat remained silent, praying mutely with moving lips and a stern,
+set face.
+
+And Count Hannibal?  As the glare of the links in the street grew
+brighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate.  He
+stilled the shrieking woman by a glance.
+
+"Choose! Mademoiselle, and quickly!" he said.  "For I can only save my
+wife and her people!  Quick, for the pinch is coming, and 'twill be no
+boy's play."
+
+A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before the window
+seconded his words.
+
+"Quick, Mademoiselle!" he cried.  And his breath came a little faster.
+"Quick, before it be too late!  Will you save life, or will you kill?"
+
+She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him.  But
+he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look.
+
+"Monsieur has done what he can to save himself," he said, with a sneer.
+"He has donned the livery of the King's servants; he has said, 'Whoever
+perishes, I will live!'  But--"
+
+"Curse you!" the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore the
+cross from his cap and flung it on the ground.  He seized his white
+sleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow.  Then, when it hung by the
+string only, he held his hand.
+
+"Curse you!" he cried furiously.  "I will not at your bidding!  I may
+save her yet!  I _will_ save her!"
+
+"Fool!" Tavannes answered--but his words were barely audible above the
+deafening uproar.  "Can you fight a thousand?  Look!  Look!" and seizing
+the other's wrist he pointed to the window.
+
+The street glowed like a furnace in the red light of torches, raised on
+poles above a sea of heads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces,
+and tossing arms which swept on and on, and on and by.  For a while it
+seemed that the torrent would flow past them and would leave them safe.
+Then came a check, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the
+torches reeled to and fro, and finally, with a dull roar of "Open!  Open!"
+the mob faced about to the house and the lighted window.
+
+For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook a
+little.  He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the disordered
+table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims before they
+tore them to pieces.  "Open!  Open!" the mob howled: and a man dashed in
+the window with his pike.
+
+In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of a
+second.  She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame the
+words, would they have been audible.  But something she must have looked,
+and something of import, though no other than he marked or understood it.
+For in a flash he was at the window and his hand was raised for silence.
+
+"Back!" he thundered.  "Back, knaves!"  And he whistled shrilly.  "Do
+what you will," he went on in the same tone, "but not here!  Pass on!
+Pass on!--do you hear?"
+
+But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted.  With a persistence brutal
+and unquestioning they continued to howl, "Open!  Open!" while the man
+who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the
+hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it.
+Then, laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot
+against the wall below.  Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed
+to dilate with the fury and violence of his character.
+
+"Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my riders and scatter you?  Must I
+flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers?  I am Tavannes;
+beware of me!  I have claws and teeth and I bite!" he continued, the
+scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he
+flung them.  "Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where
+I am!  Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man!  I will
+flay your backs.  Go!  Go!  I am Tavannes!"
+
+But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his
+arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was
+exhausted.  With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a
+dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!"  As many more
+tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window,
+and strove to pull them out or to climb between them.  Jehan, the
+cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led
+the way.
+
+Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them,
+his features plain in the glare of the torches.  But when the cripple,
+raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary's
+inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a
+pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and
+levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his.  The dwarf saw
+the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too late.  A flash, a scream,
+and the wretch, shot through the throat, flung up his hands, and fell
+back into the arms of a lean man in black who had lent him his shoulder
+to ascend.
+
+For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the room.
+There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the Huguenots were
+resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to guard the back and
+some to watch the roof, and some to be gone.  But when the fumes cleared
+away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as it had been.  Count
+Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim smile on his lips.
+
+"Who comes next?" he cried in a tone of mockery.  "I have more pistols!"
+And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" he went on.  "You
+scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles!  Do you think to beard
+me?  Do you think to frighten me or murder me?  I am Tavannes, and this
+is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in it, you should not
+touch one, nor harm a hair of his head!  Begone, I say again, while you
+may!  Seek women and children, and kill them.  But not here!"
+
+For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silenced
+them.  Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer--the roar of an
+arquebuse.  The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal's head, and, splashing
+the plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to the
+ground.
+
+Tavannes laughed.  "Bungler!" he cried.  "Were you in my troop I would
+dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot!  But you
+weary me, dogs.  I must teach you a lesson, must I?"  And he lifted a
+pistol and levelled it.  The crowd did not know whether it was the one he
+had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp.  "I must
+teach you, must I?" he continued with scorn.  "Here, Bigot, Badelon,
+drive me these blusterers!  Rid the street of them!  A Tavannes!  A
+Tavannes!"
+
+Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports.  But
+as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had stood
+motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the right flank
+of the crowd.  The surprise for those nearest them was complete.  With
+the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold steel in fancy
+between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how many pursued, or
+if any pursuit there was.  For a moment the mob, which a few minutes
+before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might have quailed before
+it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.
+
+And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and
+sweepings of the streets, it would have been.  But in the heart of it,
+and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne
+students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the
+nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this
+concourse.  And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes stood
+fast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure.  The check
+thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space.  They rallied
+behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn
+withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one
+before the window, the other before the door.
+
+Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches a
+play; with smiling interest.  In the panic, the torches had been dropped
+or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which
+hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell
+cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddled form prone in the
+gutter.  A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began
+to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms
+which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes' men.  They looked
+to the window, and muttered among themselves.  It was plain that they had
+no stomach for a fight with the Church, and were anxious for the order to
+withdraw.
+
+But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the
+cowls, they feared him more.  Meanwhile the speaker's eloquence rose
+higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house.  The mob groaned,
+and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose corselets
+rattled under the shower.  The priest seized that moment.  He sprang to
+the ground, and to the front.  He caught up his robe and waved his hand,
+and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge
+one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of
+pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--were swept away like straws
+upon the tide.
+
+But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave
+beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms
+and ravening faces.  One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and
+there in the gap stood Tavannes.  Quick as thought he fired two pistols
+into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he whistled.
+
+Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way back--as
+they were doing to the best of their power--or he had resources still
+unseen, was not to be known.  For as the smoke began to rise, and while
+the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number,
+were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them
+strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of
+alarm.  A second, and into the loose skirts of the crowd came charging
+helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of galloping, shrieking, cursing
+horsemen, attended by twice as many footmen, who clung to their stirrups
+or to the tails of the horses, and yelled and whooped, and struck in
+unison with the maddened riders.
+
+"On! on!" the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming at
+the mouth.  "Bleed in August, bleed in May!  Kill!"  And he fired a
+pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing,
+plunging charger.
+
+"Kill! Kill!" cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords, and
+rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation.  "Bleed in
+August, bleed in May!"
+
+"On!  On!" cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fled
+every way before his reckless onset.  "Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
+
+The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were ridden down,
+and this for an instant checked the riders.  Before they could pass on--
+
+"Ohe!" cried Count Hannibal from his window.  "Ohe!" with a shout of
+laughter, "ride over them, dear brother!  Make me a clean street for my
+wedding!"
+
+Marshal Tavannes--for he, the hero of Jarnac, was the leader of this wild
+orgy--turned that way, and strove to rein in his horse.
+
+"What ails them?" he cried, as the maddened animal reared upright, its
+iron hoofs striking fire from the slippery pavement.
+
+"They are rearing like thy Bayard!" Count Hannibal answered.  "Whip them,
+whip them for me!  Tavannes!  Tavannes!"
+
+"What?  This canaille?"
+
+"Ay, that canaille!"
+
+"Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" the Marshal replied, and
+spurred his horse among the rabble, who had fled to the sides of the
+street and now strove hard to efface themselves against the walls.
+"Begone, dogs; begone!" he cried, still hunting them.  And then, "You
+would bite, would you?"  And snatching another pistol from his boot, he
+fired it among them, careless whom he hit.  "Ha! ha!  That stirs you,
+does it!" he continued, as the wretches fled headlong.  "Who touches my
+brother, touches Tavannes!  On!  On!"
+
+Suddenly, from a doorway near at hand, a sombre figure darted into the
+roadway, caught the Marshal's rein, and for a second checked his course.
+The priest--for a priest it was, Father Pezelay, the same who had
+addressed the mob--held up a warning hand.
+
+"Halt!" he cried, with burning eyes.  "Halt, my lord!  It is written,
+thou shalt not spare the Canaanitish woman.  'Tis not to spare the King
+has given command and a sword, but to kill!  'Tis not to harbour, but to
+smite!  To smite!"
+
+"Then smite I will!" the Marshal retorted, and with the butt of his
+pistol struck the zealot down.  Then, with as much indifference as he
+would have treated a Huguenot, he spurred his horse over him, with a mad
+laugh at his jest.  "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" he
+yelled.  "Touches Tavannes!  On!  On!  Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
+
+"On!" shouted his followers, striking about them in the same desperate
+fashion.  They were young nobles who had spent the night feasting at the
+Palace, and, drunk with wine and mad with excitement, had left the Louvre
+at daybreak to rouse the city.  "A Jarnac!  A Jarnac!" they cried, and
+some saluted Count Hannibal as they passed.  And so, shouting and
+spurring and following their leader, they swept away down the now empty
+street, carrying terror and a flame wherever their horses bore them that
+morning.
+
+Tavannes, his hands on the ledge of the shattered window, leaned out
+laughing, and followed them with his eyes.  A moment, and the mob was
+gone, the street was empty; and one by one, with sheepish faces, his
+pikemen emerged from the doorways and alleys in which they had taken
+refuge.  They gathered about the three huddled forms which lay prone and
+still in the gutter: or, not three--two.  For even as they approached
+them, one, the priest, rose slowly and giddily to his feet.  He turned a
+face bleeding, lean, and relentless towards the window at which Tavannes
+stood.  Solemnly, with the sign of the cross, and with uplifted hands, he
+cursed him in bed and at board, by day and by night, in walking, in
+riding, in standing, in the day of battle, and at the hour of death.  The
+pikemen fell back appalled, and hid their eyes; and those who were of the
+north crossed themselves, and those who came from the south bent two
+fingers horse-shoe fashion.  But Hannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in
+his moustache, his teeth showing, and bade them move that carrion to a
+distance, for it would smell when the sun was high.  Then he turned his
+back on the street, and looked into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.
+
+
+The movements of the women had overturned two of the candles; a third had
+guttered out.  The three which still burned, contending pallidly with the
+daylight that each moment grew stronger, imparted to the scene the air of
+a debauch too long sustained.  The disordered board, the wan faces of the
+servants cowering in their corner, Mademoiselle's frozen look of misery,
+all increased the likeness; which a common exhaustion so far strengthened
+that when Tavannes turned from the window, and, flushed with his triumph,
+met the others' eyes, his seemed the only vigour, and he the only man in
+the company.  True, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the collapse of his
+victims, there burned passions, hatreds, repulsions, as fierce as the
+hidden fires of the volcano; but for the time they smouldered ash-choked
+and inert.
+
+He flung the discharged pistols on the table.  "If yonder raven speak
+truth," he said, "I am like to pay dearly for my wife, and have short
+time to call her wife.  The more need, Mademoiselle, for speed,
+therefore.  You know the old saying, 'Short signing, long seisin'?  Shall
+it be my priest, or your minister?"
+
+M. de Tignonville started forward.  "She promised nothing!" he cried.  And
+he struck his hand on the table.
+
+Count Hannibal smiled, his lip curling.  "That," he replied, "is for
+Mademoiselle to say."
+
+"But if she says it?  If she says it, Monsieur?  What then?"
+
+Tavannes drew forth a comfit-box, such as it was the fashion of the day
+to carry, as men of a later time carried a snuff-box.  He slowly chose a
+prune.
+
+"If she says it?" he answered.  "Then M. de Tignonville has regained his
+sweetheart.  And M. de Tavannes has lost his bride."
+
+"You say so?"
+
+"Yes.  But--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But she will not say it," Tavannes replied coolly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, why not?" the younger man repeated, trembling.
+
+"Because, M. de Tignonville, it is not true."
+
+"But she did not speak!" Tignonville retorted, with passion--the futile
+passion of the bird which beats its wings against a cage.  "She did not
+speak.  She could not promise, therefore."
+
+Tavannes ate the prune slowly, seemed to give a little thought to its
+flavour, approved it a true Agen plum, and at last spoke.
+
+"It is not for you to say whether she promised," he returned dryly, "nor
+for me.  It is for Mademoiselle."
+
+"You leave it to her?"
+
+"I leave it to her to say whether she promised."
+
+"Then she must say No!" Tignonville cried in a tone of triumph and
+relief.  "For she did not speak.  Mademoiselle, listen!" he continued,
+turning with outstretched hands and appealing to her with passion.  "Do
+you hear?  Do you understand?  You have but to speak to be free!  You
+have but to say the word, and Monsieur lets you go!  In God's name,
+speak!  Speak then, Clotilde!  Oh!" with a gesture of despair, as she did
+not answer, but continued to sit stony and hopeless, looking straight
+before her, her hands picking convulsively at the fringe of her girdle.
+"She does not understand!  Fright has stunned her!  Be merciful,
+Monsieur.  Give her time to recover, to know what she does.  Fright has
+turned her brain."
+
+Count Hannibal smiled.  "I knew her father and her uncle," he said, "and
+in their time the Vrillacs were not wont to be cowards.  Monsieur
+forgets, too," he continued with fine irony, "that he speaks of my
+betrothed."
+
+"It is a lie!"
+
+Tavannes raised his eyebrows.  "You are in my power," he said.  "For the
+rest, if it be a lie, Mademoiselle has but to say so."
+
+"You hear him?" Tignonville cried.  "Then speak, Mademoiselle!  Clotilde,
+speak!  Say you never spoke, you never promised him!"
+
+The young man's voice quivered with indignation, with rage, with pain;
+but most, if the truth be told, with shame--the shame of a position
+strange and unparalleled. For in proportion as the fear of death instant
+and violent was lifted from him, reflection awoke, and the situation in
+which he stood took uglier shape.  It was not so much love that cried to
+her, love that suffered, anguished by the prospect of love lost; as in
+the highest natures it might have been.  Rather it was the man's pride
+which suffered: the pride of a high spirit which found itself helpless
+between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so false that hereafter
+men might say of the unfortunate that he had bartered his mistress for
+his life.  He had not!  But he had perforce to stand by; he had to be
+passive under stress of circumstances, and by the sacrifice, if she
+consummated it, he would in fact be saved.
+
+There was the pinch.  No wonder that he cried to her in a voice which
+roused even the servants from their lethargy of fear.
+
+"Say it!" he cried.  "Say it, before it be too late.  Say, you did not
+promise!"
+
+Slowly she turned her face to him.  "I cannot," she whispered; "I cannot.
+Go," she continued, a spasm distorting her features.  "Go, Monsieur.
+Leave me.  It is over."
+
+"What?" he exclaimed.  "You promised him?"
+
+She bowed her head.
+
+"Then," the young man cried, in a transport of resentment, "I will be no
+part of the price.  See!  There!  And there!"  He tore the white sleeve
+wholly from his arm, and, rending it in twain, flung it on the floor and
+trampled on it.  "It shall never be said that I stood by and let you buy
+my life!  I go into the street and I take my chance."  And he turned to
+the door.
+
+But Tavannes was before him.  "No!" he said; "you will stay here, M. de
+Tignonville!"  And he set his back against the door.
+
+The young man looked at him, his face convulsed with passion.
+
+"I shall stay here?" he cried.  "And why, Monsieur?  What is it to you if
+I choose to perish?"
+
+"Only this," Tavannes retorted.  "I am answerable to Mademoiselle now, in
+an hour I shall be answerable to my wife--for your life.  Live, then,
+Monsieur; you have no choice.  In a month you will thank me--and her."
+
+"I am your prisoner?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And I must stay here--to be tortured?" Tignonville cried.
+
+Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled.  Sudden stormy changes, from indifference
+to ferocity, from irony to invective, were characteristic of the man.
+
+"Tortured!" he repeated grimly.  "You talk of torture while Piles and
+Pardaillan, Teligny and Rochefoucauld lie dead in the street!  While your
+cause sinks withered in a night, like a gourd!  While your servants fall
+butchered, and France rises round you in a tide of blood!  Bah!"--with a
+gesture of disdain--"you make me also talk, and I have no love for talk,
+and small time.  Mademoiselle, you at least act and do not talk.  By your
+leave I return in an hour, and I bring with me--shall it be my priest, or
+your minister?"
+
+She looked at him with the face of one who awakes slowly to the full
+horror, the full dread, of her position.  For a moment she did not
+answer.  Then--
+
+"A minister," she muttered, her voice scarcely audible.
+
+He nodded.  "A minister," he said lightly.  "Very well, if I can find
+one."  And walking to the shattered, gaping casement--through which the
+cool morning air blew into the room and gently stirred the hair of the
+unhappy girl--he said some words to the man on guard outside.  Then he
+turned to the door, but on the threshold he paused, looked with a strange
+expression at the pair, and signed to Carlat and the servants to go out
+before him.
+
+"Up, and lie close above!" he growled.  "Open a window or look out, and
+you will pay dearly for it!  Do you hear?  Up!  Up!  You, too, old crop-
+ears.  What! would you?"--with a sudden glare as Carlat hesitated--"that
+is better!  Mademoiselle, until my return."
+
+He saw them all out, followed them, and closed the door on the two; who,
+left together, alone with the gaping window and the disordered feast,
+maintained a strange silence.  The girl, gripping one hand in the other
+as if to quell her rising horror, sat looking before her, and seemed
+barely to breathe.  The man, leaning against the wall at a little
+distance, bent his eyes, not on her, but on the floor, his face gloomy
+and distorted.
+
+His first thought should have been of her and for her; his first impulse
+to console, if he could not save her.  His it should have been to soften,
+were that possible, the fate before her; to prove to her by words of
+farewell, the purest and most sacred, that the sacrifice she was making,
+not to save her own life but the lives of others, was appreciated by him
+who paid with her the price.
+
+And all these things, and more, may have been in M. de Tignonville's
+mind; they may even have been uppermost in it, but they found no
+expression.  The man remained sunk in a sombre reverie.  He had the
+appearance of thinking of himself, not of her; of his own position, not
+of hers.  Otherwise he must have looked at her, he must have turned to
+her; he must have owned the subtle attraction of her unspoken appeal when
+she drew a deep breath and slowly turned her eyes on him, mute, asking,
+waiting what he should offer.
+
+Surely he should have!  Yet it was long before he responded.  He sat
+buried in thought of himself, and his position, the vile, the unworthy
+position in which her act had placed him.  At length the constraint of
+her gaze wrought on him, or his thoughts became unbearable; and he looked
+up and met her eyes, and with an oath he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It shall not be!" he cried, in a tone low, but full of fury.  "You shall
+not do it!  I will kill him first!  I will kill him with this hand!  Or--"
+a step took him to the window, a step brought him back--ay, brought him
+back exultant, and with a changed face.  "Or better, we will thwart him
+yet.  See, Mademoiselle, do you see?  Heaven is merciful!  For a moment
+the cage is open!"  His eye shone with excitement, the sweat of sudden
+hope stood on his brow as he pointed to the unguarded casement.  "Come!
+it is our one chance!"  And he caught her by her arm and strove to draw
+her to the window.
+
+But she hung back, staring at him.  "Oh no, no!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, yes! I say!" he responded.  "You do not understand.  The way is
+open!  We can escape, Clotilde, we can escape!"
+
+"I cannot!  I cannot!" she wailed, still resisting him.
+
+"You are afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?" she repeated the word in a tone of wonder.  "No, but I cannot.
+I promised him.  I cannot.  And, O God!" she continued, in a sudden
+outburst of grief, as the sense of general loss, of the great common
+tragedy broke on her and whelmed for the moment her private misery.  "Why
+should we think of ourselves?  They are dead, they are dying, who were
+ours, whom we loved!  Why should we think to live?  What does it matter
+how it fares with us?  We cannot be happy.  Happy?" she continued wildly.
+"Are any happy now?  Or is the world all changed in a night?  No, we
+could not be happy.  And at least you will live, Tignonville.  I have
+that to console me."
+
+"Live!" he responded vehemently.  "I live?  I would rather die a thousand
+times.  A thousand times rather than live shamed!  Than see you
+sacrificed to that devil!  Than go out with a brand on my brow, for every
+man to point at me!  I would rather die a thousand times!"
+
+"And do you think that I would not?" she answered, shivering.  "Better,
+far better die than--than live with him!"
+
+"Then why not die?"
+
+She stared at him, wide-eyed, and a sudden stillness possessed her.
+"How?" she whispered.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"That!" he said.  As he spoke, he raised his hand and signed to her to
+listen.  A sullen murmur, distant as yet, but borne to the ear on the
+fresh morning air, foretold the rising of another storm.  The sound grew
+in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she
+misunderstood him.  "O God!" she cried, out of the agony of nerves
+overwrought, "will that bell never stop?  Will it never stop?  Will no
+one stop it?"
+
+"'Tis not the bell!" he cried, seizing her hand as if to focus her
+attention.  "It is the mob you hear.  They are returning.  We have but to
+stand a moment at this open window, we have but to show ourselves to
+them, and we need live no longer!  Mademoiselle!  Clotilde!--if you mean
+what you say, if you are in earnest, the way is open!"
+
+"And we shall die--together!"
+
+"Yes, together.  But have you the courage?"
+
+"The courage?" she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her
+face.  "The courage were needed to live.  The courage were needed to do
+that.  I am ready, quite ready.  It can be no sin!  To live with that in
+front of me were the sin!  Come!"  For the moment she had forgotten her
+people, her promise, all!  It seemed to her that death would absolve her
+from all.  "Come!"
+
+He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the
+gaping window.  The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment
+before, had grown to a roar of voices.  The mob, on its return eastward
+along the Rue St. Honore, was nearing the house.  He stood, his arm
+supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window.  Suddenly he
+stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their eyes met; he would
+have kissed her.
+
+She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her eyes
+half shut.
+
+"No!" she murmured.  "No!  While I live I am his.  But we die together,
+Tignonville!  We die together.  It will not last long, will it?  And
+afterwards--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and over
+her features came a far-away look; such a look as that which on the face
+of another Huguenot lady, Philippa de Luns--vilely done to death in the
+Place Maubert fourteen years before--silenced the ribald jests of the
+lowest rabble in the world.  An hour or two earlier, awed by the
+abruptness of the outburst, Mademoiselle had shrunk from her fate; she
+had known fear.  Now that she stood out voluntarily to meet it, she, like
+many a woman before and since, feared no longer.  She was lifted out of
+and above herself.
+
+But death was long in coming.  Some cause beyond their knowledge stayed
+the onrush of the mob along the street.  The din, indeed, persisted,
+deafened, shook them; but the crowd seemed to be at a stand a few doors
+down the Rue St. Honore.  For a half-minute, a long half-minute, which
+appeared an age, it drew no nearer.  Would it draw nearer?  Would it come
+on?  Or would it turn again?
+
+The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of the
+man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer.  The sweat rose
+on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as
+he stood listening and waiting.  It is possible that when he had said a
+minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live
+thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark.  Or it is possible that he
+had meant his words to the full.  But in this case he had not pictured
+what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive
+endurance.  He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier;
+but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to
+women than to men, more hardly to men than to women.  Yet had the crisis
+come quickly he might have met it.  But he had to wait, and to wait with
+that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not
+prepared.  A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man?
+His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither.  Was
+it even now too late to escape?  Too late to avoid the consequences of
+the girl's silly persistence?  Too late to--?  Her eyes were closed, she
+hung half lifeless on his arm.  She would not know, she need not know
+until afterwards.  And afterwards she would thank him!
+Afterwards--meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still
+the crowd hung back and did not come.
+
+He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the
+Rue St. Honore turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge
+in the Rue du Roule.  If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob!  He
+_would_ gain it.  With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step
+forward.  He tightened his grasp of the girl's waist, and, seizing with
+his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its
+setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself.  One long step
+would land him in the street.
+
+At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation.  She opened her
+eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.
+
+He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her after
+him.  But it was not this betrayed him.  It was his face, which in an
+instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life!  She
+struggled upright and strove to free herself.  But he had the purchase of
+the bar, and by this time he was furious as well as determined.  Whether
+she would or no, he would save her, he would drag her out.  Then, as
+consciousness fully returned, she, too, took fire.
+
+"No!" she cried, "I will not!" and she struggled more violently.
+
+"You shall!" he retorted between his teeth.  "You shall not perish here."
+
+But she had her hands free, and as he spoke she thrust him from her
+passionately, desperately, with all her strength.  He had his one foot in
+the air at the moment, and in a flash it was done.  With a cry of rage he
+lost his balance, and, still holding the bar, reeled backwards through
+the window; while Mademoiselle, panting and half fainting,
+recoiled--recoiled into the arms of Hannibal de Tavannes, who, unseen by
+either, had entered the room a long minute before.  From the threshold,
+and with a smile, all his own, he had watched the contest and the result.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  TWO HENS AND AN EGG.
+
+
+M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of
+things he would have lain where he was, and groaned.  But when a man has
+once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at his shoulder.  He
+has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to set as great a
+distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself.  So it was with
+the Huguenot.  Shot suddenly into the full publicity of the street, he
+knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape; and he was on
+his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter of his fall had
+travelled the length of three houses.
+
+The rabble were still a hundred paces away, piled up and pressed about a
+house where men were being hunted as men hunt rats.  He saw that he was
+unnoted, and apprehension gave place to rage.  His thoughts turned back
+hissing hot to the thing that had happened, and in a paroxysm of shame he
+shook his fist at the gaping casement and the sneering face of his rival,
+dimly seen in the background.  If a look would have killed Tavannes--and
+her--it had not been wanting.
+
+For it was not only the man M. de Tignonville hated at this moment; he
+hated Mademoiselle also, the unwitting agent of the other's triumph.  She
+had thrust him from her; she had refused to be guided by him; she had
+resisted, thwarted, shamed him.  Then let her take the consequences.  She
+willed to perish: let her perish!
+
+He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, the
+proof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of that courage
+to stand the test.  Yet it was this, though he had himself provoked the
+trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's fire burns up the
+dwarf heath upon the Landes.  It was the discovery that in an heroic hour
+he was no hero that gave force to his passionate gesture, and next moment
+sent him storming down the beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his
+heart a maelstrom of fierce vows and fiercer menaces.
+
+He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
+entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go.  His
+lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
+Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him.  To approach those of his faith
+whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond the
+religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest.  Yet the
+streets were impossible.  He walked them on the utmost edge of peril; he
+lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe.  And, whether he
+walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers bold enough to
+take his life.
+
+The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the alley-
+end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set for death
+in that sunlit city.  In every window of the gable end which faced his
+hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in every distant
+step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to his discovery.  And
+while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to form some plan.
+
+In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country no
+safety.  And how could he gain the open country?  If he succeeded in
+reaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a task of
+difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guard on
+the alert.  At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river; and
+at the notion hope awoke.  It was possible that the massacre had not
+extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, the Huguenots
+who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, with the men of
+the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even to turn the
+tables on the Parisians.
+
+His colour returned.  He was no coward, as soldiers go; if it came to
+fighting he had courage enough.  He could not hope to cross the river by
+the bridge, for there, where the goldsmiths lived, the mob were like to
+be most busy.  But if he could reach the bank he might procure a boat at
+some deserted point, or, at the worst, he might swim across.
+
+From the Louvre at his back came the sound of gunshots; from every
+quarter the murmur of distant crowds, or the faint lamentable cries of
+victims.  But the empty street before him promised an easy passage, and
+he ventured into it and passed quickly through it.  He met no one, and no
+one molested him; but as he went he had glimpses of pale faces that from
+behind the casements watched him come and turned to watch him go; and so
+heavy on his nerves was the pressure of this silent ominous attention,
+that he blundered at the end of the street.  He should have taken the
+southerly turning; instead he held on, found himself in the Rue
+Ferronerie, and a moment later was all but in the arms of a band of city
+guards, who were making a house-to-house visitation.
+
+He owed his safety rather to the condition of the street than to his
+presence of mind.  The Rue Ferronerie, narrow in itself, was so choked at
+this date by stalls and bulkheads, that an edict directing the removal of
+those which abutted on the cemetery had been issued a little before.
+Nothing had been done on it, however, and this neck of Paris, this main
+thoroughfare between the east and the west, between the fashionable
+quarter of the Marais and the fashionable quarter of the Louvre, was
+still a devious huddle of sheds and pent-houses.  Tignonville slid behind
+one of these, found that it masked the mouth of an alley, and, heedless
+whither the passage led, ran hurriedly along it.  Every instant he
+expected to hear the hue and cry behind him, and he did not halt or draw
+breath until he had left the soldiers far in the rear, and found himself
+astray at the junction of four noisome lanes, over two of which the
+projecting gables fairly met.  Above the two others a scrap of sky
+appeared, but this was too small to indicate in which direction the river
+lay.
+
+Tignonville hesitated, but not for long; a burst of voices heralded a new
+danger, and he shrank into a doorway.  Along one of the lanes a troop of
+children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing and leaping
+round something which they dragged by a string.  Now one of the hindmost
+would burl it onward with a kick, now another, amid screams of childish
+laughter, tripped headlong over the cord; now at the crossways they
+stopped to wrangle and question which way they should go, or whose turn
+it was to pull and whose to follow.  At last they started afresh with a
+whoop, the leader singing and all plucking the string to the cadence of
+the air.  Their plaything leapt and dropped, sprang forward, and lingered
+like a thing of life.  But it was no thing of life, as Tignonville saw
+with a shudder when they passed him.  The object of their sport was the
+naked body of a child, an infant!
+
+His gorge rose at the sight.  Fear such as he had not before experienced
+chilled his marrow.  This was hate indeed, a hate before which the strong
+man quailed; the hate of which Mademoiselle had spoken when she said that
+the babes crossed themselves at her passing, and the houses tottered to
+fall upon her!
+
+He paused a minute to recover himself, so deeply had the sight moved him;
+and as he stood, he wondered if that hate already had its cold eye fixed
+on him.  Instinctively his gaze searched the opposite wall, but save for
+two small double-grated windows it was blind; time-stained and
+stone-built, dark with the ordure of the city lane, it seemed but the
+back of a house, which looked another way.  The outer gates of an arched
+doorway were open, and a loaded haycart, touching either side and
+brushing the arch above, blocked the passage.  His gaze, leaving the
+windows, dropped to this--he scanned it a moment; and on a sudden he
+stiffened.  Between the hay and the arch a hand flickered an instant,
+then vanished.
+
+Tignonville stared.  At first he thought his eyes had tricked him.  Then
+the hand appeared again, and this time it conveyed an unmistakable
+invitation.  It is not from the unknown or the hidden that the fugitive
+has aught to fear, and Tignonville, after casting a glance down the
+lane--which revealed a single man standing with his face the other
+way--slipped across and pushed between the hay and the wall.  He coughed.
+
+A voice whispered to him to climb up; a friendly hand clutched him in the
+act, and aided him.  In a second he was lying on his face, tight squeezed
+between the hay and the roof of the arch.  Beside him lay a man whose
+features his eyes, unaccustomed to the gloom, could not discern.  But the
+man knew him and whispered his name.
+
+"You know me?" Tignonville muttered in astonishment.
+
+"I marked you, M. de Tignonville, at the preaching last Sunday," the
+stranger answered placidly.
+
+"You were there?"
+
+"I preached."
+
+"Then you are M. la Tribe!"
+
+"I am," the clergyman answered quietly.  "They seized me on my threshold,
+but I left my cloak in their hands and fled.  One tore my stocking with
+his point, another my doublet, but not a hair of my head was injured.
+They hunted me to the end of the next street, but I lived and still live,
+and shall live to lift up my voice against this wicked city."
+
+The sympathy between the Huguenot by faith and the Huguenot by politics
+was imperfect.  Tignonville, like most men of rank of the younger
+generation, was a Huguenot by politics; and he was in a bitter humour.  He
+felt, perhaps, that it was men such as this who had driven the other side
+to excesses such as these; and he hardly repressed a sneer.
+
+"I wish I felt as sure!" he muttered bluntly.  "You know that all our
+people are dead?"
+
+"He can save by few or by many," the preacher answered devoutly.  "We are
+of the few, blessed be God, and shall see Israel victorious, and our
+people as a flock of sheep!"
+
+"I see small chance of it," Tignonville answered contemptuously.
+
+"I know it as certainly as I knew before you came, M. de Tignonville,
+that you would come!"
+
+"That _I_ should come?"
+
+"That some one would come," La Tribe answered, correcting himself.  "I
+knew not who it would be until you appeared and placed yourself in the
+doorway over against me, even as Obadiah in the Holy Book passed before
+the hiding-place of Elijah."
+
+The two lay on their faces side by side, the rafters of the archway low
+on their heads.  Tignonville lifted himself a little, and peered anew at
+the other.  He fancied that La Tribe's mind, shaken by the horrors of the
+morning and his narrow escape, had given way.
+
+"You rave, man," he said.  "This is no time for visions."
+
+"I said naught of visions," the other answered.
+
+"Then why so sure that we shall escape?"
+
+"I am certified of it," La Tribe replied.  "And more than that, I know
+that we shall lie here some days.  The time has not been revealed to me,
+but it will be days and a day.  Then we shall leave this place unharmed,
+as we entered it, and, whatever betide others, we shall live."
+
+Tignonville shrugged his shoulders.  "I tell you, you rave, M. la Tribe,"
+he said petulantly.  "At any moment we may be discovered.  Even now I
+hear footsteps."
+
+"They tracked me well-nigh to this place," the minister answered
+placidly.
+
+"The deuce they did!" Tignonville muttered, with irritation.  He dared
+not raise his voice.  "I would you had told me that before I joined you,
+Monsieur, and I had found some safer hiding-place!  When we are
+discovered--"
+
+"Then," the other continued calmly, "you will see."
+
+"In any case we shall be better farther back," Tignonville retorted.
+"Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane."  And he began
+to wriggle himself backwards.
+
+The minister laid his hand on him.  "Have a care!" he muttered.  "And do
+not move, but listen.  And you will understand.  When I reached this
+place--it would be about five o'clock this morning--breathless, and
+expecting each minute to be dragged forth to make my confession before
+men, I despaired as you despair now.  Like Elijah under the juniper tree,
+I said, 'It is enough, O Lord!  Take my soul also, for I am no better
+than my fellows!'  All the sky was black before my eyes, and my ears were
+filled with the wailings of the little ones and the lamentations of
+women.  'O Lord, it is enough,' I prayed.  'Take my soul, or, if it be
+Thy will, then, as the angel was sent to take the cakes to Elijah, give
+me also a sign that I shall live.'"
+
+For a moment he paused, struggling with overpowering emotion.  Even his
+impatient listener, hitherto incredulous, caught the infection, and in a
+tone of awe murmured--
+
+"Yes?  And then, M. la Tribe!"
+
+"The sign was given me.  The words were scarcely out of my mouth when a
+hen flew up, and, scratching a nest in the hay at my feet, presently laid
+an egg."
+
+Tignonville stared.  "It was timely, I admit," he said.  "But it is no
+uncommon thing.  Probably it has its nest here and lays daily."
+
+"Young man, this is new-mown hay," the minister answered solemnly.  "This
+cart was brought here no further back than yesterday.  It smells of the
+meadow, and the flowers hold their colour.  No, the fowl was sent.  To-
+morrow it will return, and the next, and the next, until the plague be
+stayed and I go hence.  But that is not all.  A while later a second hen
+appeared, and I thought it would lay in the same nest.  But it made a new
+one, on the side on which you lie and not far from your foot.  Then I
+knew that I was to have a companion, and that God had laid also for him a
+table in the wilderness."
+
+"It did lay, then?"
+
+"It is still on the nest, beside your foot."
+
+Tignonville was about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm and by a
+sign enjoined silence.  He did so not a moment too soon.  Preoccupied by
+the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed to what was passing in
+the lane, and the voices of men speaking close at hand took them by
+surprise.  From the first words which reached them, it was clear that the
+speakers were the same who had chased La Tribe as far as the meeting of
+the four ways, and, losing him there, had spent the morning in other
+business.  Now they had returned to hunt him down; and but for a wrangle
+which arose among them and detained them, they had stolen on their quarry
+before their coming was suspected.
+
+"'Twas this way he ran!"  "No, 'twas the other!" they contended; and
+their words, winged with vile threats and oaths, grew noisy and hot.  The
+two listeners dared scarcely to breathe.  The danger was so near, it was
+so certain that if the men came three paces farther, they would observe
+and search the haycart, that Tignonville fancied the steel already at his
+throat.  He felt the hay rustle under his slightest movement, and gripped
+one hand with the other to restrain the tremor of overpowering
+excitement.  Yet when he glanced at the minister he found him unmoved, a
+smile on his face.  And M. de Tignonville could have cursed him for his
+folly.
+
+For the men were coming on!  An instant, and they perceived the cart, and
+the ruffian who had advised this route pounced on it in triumph.
+
+"There!  Did I not say so?" he cried.  "He is curled up in that hay, for
+the Satan's grub he is!  That is where he is, see you!"
+
+"Maybe," another answered grudgingly, as they gathered before it.  "And
+maybe not, Simon!"
+
+"To hell with your maybe not!" the first replied.  And he drove his pike
+deep into the hay and turned it viciously.
+
+The two on the top controlled themselves.  Tignonville's face was livid;
+of himself he would have slid down amongst them and taken his chance,
+preferring to die fighting, to die in the open, rather than to perish
+like a rat in a stack.  But La Tribe had gripped his arm and held him
+fast.
+
+The man whom the others called Simon thrust again, but too low and
+without result.  He was for trying a third time, when one of his comrades
+who had gone to the other side of the lane announced that the men were on
+the top of the hay.
+
+"Can you see them?"
+
+"No, but there's room and to spare."
+
+"Oh, a curse on your room!" Simon retorted.  "Well, you can look."
+
+"If that's all, I'll soon look!" was the answer.  And the rogue, forcing
+himself between the hay and the side of the gateway, found the wheel of
+the cart, and began to raise himself on it.
+
+Tignonville, who lay on that hand, heard, though he could not see his
+movements.  He knew what they meant, he knew that in a twinkling he must
+be discovered; and with a last prayer he gathered himself for a spring.
+
+It seemed an age before the intruder's head appeared on a level with the
+hay; and then the alarm came from another quarter.  The hen which had
+made its nest at Tignonville's feet, disturbed by the movement or by the
+newcomer's hand, flew out with a rush and flutter as of a great firework.
+Upsetting the startled Simon, who slipped swearing to the ground, it
+swooped scolding and clucking over the heads of the other men, and
+reaching the street in safety, scuttled off at speed, its outspread wings
+sweeping the earth in its rage.
+
+They laughed uproariously as Simon emerged, rubbing his elbow.
+
+"There's for you!  There's your preacher!" his opponent jeered.
+
+"D---n her! she gives tongue as fast as any of them!" gibed a second.
+"Will you try again, Simon?  You may find another love-letter there!"
+
+"Have done!" a third cried impatiently.  "He'll not be where the hen is!
+Let's back!  Let's back!  I said before that it wasn't this way he
+turned!  He's made for the river."
+
+"The plague in his vitals!" Simon replied furiously. "Wherever he is,
+I'll find him!"  And, reluctant to confess himself wrong, he lingered,
+casting vengeful glances at the hay.
+
+But one of the other men cursed him for a fool; and presently, forced to
+accept his defeat or be left alone, he rejoined his fellows.  Slowly the
+footsteps and voices receded along the lane; slowly, until silence
+swallowed them, and on the quivering strained senses of the two who
+remained behind, descended the gentle influence of twilight and the sweet
+scent of the new-mown hay on which they lay.
+
+La Tribe turned to his companion, his eyes shining.  "Our soul is
+escaped," he murmured, "even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler.
+The snare is broken and we are delivered!"  His voice shook as he
+whispered the ancient words of triumph.
+
+But when they came to look in the nest at Tignonville's feet there was no
+egg!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  UNSTABLE.
+
+
+And that troubled M. la Tribe no little, although he did not impart his
+thoughts to his companion.  Instead they talked in whispers of the things
+which had happened; of the Admiral, of Teligny, whom all loved, of
+Rochefoucauld the accomplished, the King's friend; of the princes in the
+Louvre whom they gave up for lost, and of the Huguenot nobles on the
+farther side of the river, of whose safety there seemed some hope.
+Tignonville--he best knew why--said nothing of the fate of his betrothed,
+or of his own adventures in that connection.  But each told the other how
+the alarm had reached him, and painted in broken words his reluctance to
+believe in treachery so black.  Thence they passed to the future of the
+cause, and of that took views as opposite as light and darkness, as
+Papegot and Huguenot.  The one was confident, the other in despair.  And
+some time in the afternoon, worn out by the awful experiences of the last
+twelve hours, they fell asleep, their heads on their arms, the hay
+tickling their faces; and, with death stalking the lane beside them,
+slept soundly until after sundown.
+
+When they awoke hunger awoke with them, and urged on La Tribe's mind the
+question of the missing egg.  It was not altogether the prick of appetite
+which troubled him, but regarding the hiding-place in which they lay as
+an ark of refuge providentially supplied, protected and victualled, he
+could not refrain from asking reverently what the deficiency meant.  It
+was not as if one hen only had appeared; as if no farther prospect had
+been extended.  But up to a certain point the message was clear.  Then
+when the Hand of Providence had shown itself most plainly, and in a
+manner to melt the heart with awe and thankfulness, the message had been
+blurred.  Seriously the Huguenot asked himself what it portended.
+
+To Tignonville, if he thought of it at all, the matter was the matter of
+an egg, and stopped there.  An egg might alleviate the growing pangs of
+hunger; its non-appearance was a disappointment, but he traced the matter
+no farther.  It must be confessed, too, that the haycart was to him only
+a haycart--and not an ark; and the sooner he was safely away from it the
+better he would be pleased.  While La Tribe, lying snug and warm beside
+him, thanked God for a lot so different from that of such of his fellows
+as had escaped--whom he pictured crouching in dank cellars, or on roof-
+trees exposed to the heat by day and the dews by night--the young man
+grew more and more restive.
+
+Hunger pricked him, and the meanness of the part he had played moved him
+to action.  About midnight, resisting the dissuasions of his companion,
+he would have sallied out in search of food if the passage of a turbulent
+crowd had not warned him that the work of murder was still proceeding.  He
+curbed himself after that and lay until daylight.  But, ill content with
+his own conduct, on fire when he thought of his betrothed, he was in no
+temper to bear hardship cheerfully or long; and gradually there rose
+before his mind the picture of Madame St. Lo's smiling face, and the fair
+hair which curled low on the white of her neck.
+
+He would, and he would not.  Death that had stalked so near him preached
+its solemn sermon.  But death and pleasure are never far apart; and at no
+time and nowhere have they jostled one another more familiarly than in
+that age, wherever the influence of Italy and Italian art and Italian
+hopelessness extended.  Again, on the one side, La Tribe's example went
+for something with his comrade in misfortune; but in the other scale hung
+relief from discomfort, with the prospect of a woman's smiles and a
+woman's flatteries, of dainty dishes, luxury, and passion.  If he went
+now, he went to her from the jaws of death, with the glamour of adventure
+and peril about him; and the very going into her presence was a lure.
+Moreover, if he had been willing while his betrothed was still his, why
+not now when he had lost her?
+
+It was this last reflection--and one other thing which came on a sudden
+into his mind--which turned the scale.  About noon he sat up in the hay,
+and, abruptly and sullenly, "I'll lie here no longer," he said; and he
+dropped his legs over the side.  "I shall go."
+
+The movement was so unexpected that La Tribe stared at him in silence.
+Then, "You will run a great risk, M. de Tignonville," he said gravely,
+"if you do.  You may go as far under cover of night as the river, or you
+may reach one of the gates.  But as to crossing the one or passing the
+other, I reckon it a thing impossible."
+
+"I shall not wait until night," Tignonville answered curtly, a ring of
+defiance in his tone.  "I shall go now!  I'll lie here no longer!"
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"You will be mad if you do," the other replied.  He thought it the
+petulant outcry of youth tired of inaction; a protest, and nothing more.
+
+He was speedily undeceived.  "Mad or not, I am going!" Tignonville
+retorted.  And he slid to the ground, and from the covert of the hanging
+fringe of hay looked warily up and down the lane.  "It is clear, I
+think," he said.  "Good-bye."  And with no more, without one upward
+glance or a gesture of the hand, with no further adieu or word of
+gratitude, he walked out into the lane, turned briskly to the left, and
+vanished.
+
+The minister uttered a cry of surprise, and made as if he would descend
+also.
+
+"Come back, sir!" he called, as loudly as he dared.  "M. de Tignonville,
+come back!  This is folly or worse!"
+
+But M. de Tignonville was gone.
+
+La Tribe listened a while, unable to believe it, and still expecting his
+return.  At last, hearing nothing, he slid, greatly excited, to the
+ground and looked out.  It was not until he had peered up and down the
+lane and made sure that it was empty that he could persuade himself that
+the other had gone for good.  Then he climbed slowly and seriously to his
+place again, and sighed as he settled himself.
+
+"Unstable as water thou shalt not excel!" he muttered.  "Now I know why
+there was only one egg."
+
+Meanwhile Tignonville, after putting a hundred yards between himself and
+his bedfellow, plunged into the first dark entry which presented itself.
+Hurriedly, and with a frowning face, he cut off his left sleeve from
+shoulder to wrist; and this act, by disclosing his linen, put him in
+possession of the white sleeve which he had once involuntarily donned,
+and once discarded.  The white cross on the cap he could not assume, for
+he was bareheaded.  But he had little doubt that the sleeve would
+suffice, and with a bold demeanour he made his way northward until he
+reached again the Rue Ferronerie.
+
+Excited groups were wandering up and down the street, and, fearing to
+traverse its crowded narrows, he went by lanes parallel with it as far as
+the Rue St. Denis, which he crossed.  Everywhere he saw houses gutted and
+doors burst in, and traces of a cruelty and a fanaticism almost
+incredible.  Near the Rue des Lombards he saw a dead child, stripped
+stark and hanged on the hook of a cobbler's shutter.  A little farther on
+in the same street he stepped over the body of a handsome young woman,
+distinguished by the length and beauty of her hair.  To obtain her
+bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands; afterwards--but God knows
+how long afterwards--a passer-by, more pitiful than his fellows, had put
+her out of her misery with a spit, which still remained plunged in her
+body.
+
+M. de Tignonville shuddered at the sight, and at others like it.  He
+loathed the symbol he wore, and himself for wearing it; and more than
+once his better nature bade him return and play the nobler part.  Once he
+did turn with that intention.  But he had set his mind on comfort and
+pleasure, and the value of these things is raised, not lowered, by danger
+and uncertainty.  Quickly his stoicism oozed away; he turned again.
+Barely avoiding the rush of a crowd of wretches who were bearing a
+swooning victim to the river, he hurried through the Rue des Lombards,
+and reached in safety the house beside the Golden Maid.
+
+He had no doubt now on which side of the Maid Madame St. Lo lived; the
+house was plain before him.  He had only to knock.  But in proportion as
+he approached his haven, his anxiety grew.  To lose all, with all in his
+grasp, to fail upon the threshold, was a thing which bore no looking at;
+and it was with a nervous hand and eyes cast fearfully behind him that he
+plied the heavy iron knocker which adorned the door.
+
+He could not turn his gaze from a knot of ruffians, who were gathered
+under one of the tottering gables on the farther side of the street.  They
+seemed to be watching him, and he fancied--though the distance rendered
+this impossible--that he could see suspicion growing in their eyes.  At
+any moment they might cross the roadway, they might approach, they might
+challenge him.  And at the thought he knocked and knocked again.  Why did
+not the porter come?
+
+Ay, why?  For now a score of contingencies came into the young man's mind
+and tortured him.  Had Madame St. Lo withdrawn to safer quarters and
+closed the house?  Or, good Catholic as she was, had she given way to
+panic, and determined to open to no one?  Or was she ill?  Or had she
+perished in the general disorder?  Or--
+
+And then, even as the men began to slink towards him, his heart leapt.  He
+heard a footstep heavy and slow move through the house.  It came nearer
+and nearer.  A moment, and an iron-grated Judas-hole in the door slid
+open, and a servant, an elderly man, sleek and respectable, looked out at
+him.
+
+Tignonville could scarcely speak for excitement.  "Madame St. Lo?" he
+muttered tremulously.  "I come to her from her cousin the Comte de
+Tavannes.  Quick! quick! if you please.  Open to me!"
+
+"Monsieur is alone?"
+
+"Yes!  Yes!"
+
+The man nodded gravely and slid back the bolts.  He allowed M. de
+Tignonville to enter, then with care he secured the door, and led the way
+across a small square court, paved with red tiles and enclosed by the
+house, but open above to the sunshine and the blue sky.  A gallery which
+ran round the upper floor looked on this court, in which a great quiet
+reigned, broken only by the music of a fountain.  A vine climbed on the
+wooden pillars which supported the gallery, and, aspiring higher,
+embraced the wide carved eaves, and even tapestried with green the three
+gables that on each side of the court broke the skyline.  The grapes hung
+nearly ripe, and amid their clusters and the green lattice of their
+foliage Tignonville's gaze sought eagerly but in vain the laughing eyes
+and piquant face of his new mistress.  For with the closing of the door,
+and the passing from him of the horrors of the streets, he had entered,
+as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world of tennis and roses, of
+tinkling voices and women's wiles, a world which smacked of Florence and
+the South, and love and life; a world which his late experiences had set
+so far away from him, his memory of it seemed a dream.  Now, as he drank
+in its stillness and its fragrance, as he felt its safety and its luxury
+lap him round once more, he sighed.  And with that breath he rid himself
+of much.
+
+The servant led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side
+of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew.  A
+moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt
+as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks.  He
+went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes grew bright.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  MADAME ST. LO.
+
+
+So far excitement had supported Tignonville in his escape.  It was only
+when he knew himself safe, when he heard Madame St. Lo's footstep in the
+courtyard and knew that in a moment he would see her, that he knew also
+that he was failing for want of food.  The room seemed to go round with
+him; the window to shift, the light to flicker.  And then again, with
+equal abruptness, he grew strong and steady and perfectly master of
+himself.  Nay, never had he felt a confidence in himself so overwhelming
+or a capacity so complete.  The triumph of that which he had done, the
+knowledge that of so many he, almost alone, had escaped, filled his brain
+with a delicious and intoxicating vanity.  When the door opened, and
+Madame St. Lo appeared on the threshold, he advanced holding out his
+arms.  He expected that she would fall into them.
+
+But Madame only backed and curtseyed, a mischievous light in her eyes.
+
+"A thousand thanks, Monsieur!" she said, "but you are more ready than I!"
+And she remained by the door.
+
+"I have come to you through all!" he cried, speaking loudly because of a
+humming in his ears.  "They are lying in the streets!  They are dying,
+are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing!  But I have come
+through all to you!"
+
+She curtseyed anew.  "So I see, Monsieur!" she answered.  "I am
+flattered!"  But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he
+was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness.  And
+he took offence.
+
+"I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated.  "And you do not seem
+pleased!"
+
+She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly.
+
+"Oh yes," she said.  "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville.  It is what I
+intended.  But tell me how you have fared.  You are not hurt?"
+
+"Not a hair!" he cried boastfully.  And he told her in a dozen windy
+sentences of the adventure of the haycart and his narrow escape.  He
+wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.
+
+"Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?" she said.  And when he
+did not answer, "I understand," she continued, nodding and speaking as to
+a child.  And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order.
+
+She addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville's ear her
+voice seemed to fall to a whisper.  Her figure--she was small and fairy-
+like--began to sway before him; and then in a moment, as it seemed to
+him, she was gone, and he was seated at a table, his trembling fingers
+grasping a cup of wine which the elderly servant who had admitted him was
+holding to his lips.  On the table before him were a spit of partridges
+and a cake of white bread.  When he had swallowed a second mouthful of
+wine--which cleared his eyes as by magic--the man urged him to eat.  And
+he fell to with an appetite that grew as he ate.
+
+By-and-by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame's
+women were peering at him through the open doorway.  He looked that way
+and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back
+again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the door.
+It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their
+favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why
+she did not come and serve him herself.
+
+But for a while longer the savour of the roasted game took up the major
+part of his thoughts; and when prudence warned him to desist, and he sat
+back, satisfied after his long fast, he was in no mood to be critical.
+Perhaps--for somewhere in the house he heard a lute--Madame was
+entertaining those whom she could not leave?  Or deluding some who might
+betray him if they discovered him?
+
+From that his mind turned back to the streets and the horrors through
+which he had passed; but for a moment and no more.  A shudder, an emotion
+of prayerful pity, and he recalled his thoughts.  In the quiet of the
+cool room, looking on the sunny, vine-clad court, with the tinkle of the
+lute and the murmurous sound of women's voices in his ears, it was hard
+to believe that the things from which he had emerged were real.  It was
+still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on them.  A day of
+reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the cause would rally,
+bristling with pikes and snorting with war-horses, and the blood spilled
+in this wicked city would cry aloud for vengeance.  But the hour was not
+yet.  He had lost his mistress, and for that atonement must be exacted.
+But in the present another mistress awaited him, and as a man could only
+die once, and might die at any minute, so he could only live once, and in
+the present.  Then _vogue la galere_!
+
+As he roused himself from this brief reverie and fell to wondering how
+long he was to be left to himself, a rosebud tossed by an unseen hand
+struck him on the breast and dropped to his knees.  To seize it and kiss
+it gallantly, to spring to his feet and look about him were instinctive
+movements.  But he could see no one; and, in the hope of surprising the
+giver, he stole to the window.  The sound of the lute and the distant
+tinkle of laughter persisted.  The court, save for a page, who lay asleep
+on a bench in the gallery, was empty.  Tignonville scanned the boy
+suspiciously; a male disguise was often adopted by the court ladies, and
+if Madame would play a prank on him, this was a thing to be reckoned
+with.  But a boy it seemed to be, and after a while the young man went
+back to his seat.
+
+Even as he sat down, a second flower struck him more sharply in the face,
+and this time he darted not to the window but to the door.  He opened it
+quickly and looked out, but again he was too late.
+
+"I shall catch you presently, _ma reine_!" he murmured tenderly, with
+intent to be heard.  And he closed the door.  But, wiser this time, he
+waited with his hand on the latch until he heard the rustling of a skirt,
+and saw the line of light at the foot of the door darkened by a shadow.
+That moment he flung the door wide, and, clasping the wearer of the skirt
+in his arms, kissed her lips before she had time to resist.
+
+Then he fell back as if he had been shot!  For the wearer of the skirt,
+she whom he had kissed, was Madame St. Lo's woman, and behind her stood
+Madame herself, laughing, laughing, laughing with all the gay abandonment
+of her light little heart.
+
+"Oh, the gallant gentleman!" she cried, and clapped her hands effusively.
+"Was ever recovery so rapid?  Or triumph so speedy?  Suzanne, my child;
+you surpass Venus.  Your charms conquer before they are seen!"
+
+M. de Tignonville had put poor Suzanne from him as if she burned; and hot
+and embarrassed, cursing his haste, he stood looking awkwardly at them.
+
+"Madame," he stammered at last, "you know quite well that--"
+
+"Seeing is believing!"
+
+"That I thought it was you!"
+
+"Oh, what I have lost!" she replied.  And she looked archly at Suzanne,
+who giggled and tossed her head.
+
+He was growing angry.  "But, Madame," he protested, "you know--"
+
+"I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!" Madame answered
+merrily.  And she hummed,
+
+   "'Ce fut le plus grand jour d'este
+   Que m'embrassa la belle Suzanne!'
+
+Oh yes, I know what I know!" she repeated.  And she fell again to
+laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her hung
+her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an
+affectation of modesty.
+
+The young man glowered at them between rage and embarrassment.  This was
+not the reception, nor this the hero's return to which he had looked
+forward.  And a doubt began to take form in his mind.  The mistress he
+had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another; nor forget in a
+twinkling the straits through which he had come to her, the hell from
+which he had plucked himself!  Possibly the court ladies held love as
+cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, butts for their wit, and
+pegs on which to hang their laughter.  But--but he began to doubt, and,
+perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.
+
+"Madame," he said stiffly, "a jest is an excellent thing.  But pardon me
+if I say that it is ill played on a fasting man."
+
+Madame desisted from laughter that she might speak.  "A fasting man?" she
+cried.  "And he has eaten two partridges!"
+
+"Fasting from love, Madame."
+
+Madame St. Lo held up her hands.  "And it's not two minutes since he took
+a kiss!"
+
+He winced, was silent a moment, and then seeing that he got nothing by
+the tone he had adopted he cried for quarter.
+
+"A little mercy, Madame, as you are beautiful," he said, wooing her with
+his eyes.  "Do not plague me beyond what a man can bear.  Dismiss, I pray
+you, this good creature--whose charms do but set off yours as the star
+leads the eye to the moon--and make me the happiest man in the world by
+so much of your company as you will vouchsafe to give me."
+
+"That may be but a very little," she answered, letting her eyes fall
+coyly, and affecting to handle the tucker of her low ruff.  But he saw
+that her lip twitched; and he could have sworn that she mocked him to
+Suzanne, for the girl giggled.
+
+Still by an effort he controlled his feelings.  "Why so cruel?" he
+murmured, in a tone meant for her alone, and with a look to match.  "You
+were not so hard when I spoke with you in the gallery, two evenings ago,
+Madame."
+
+"Was I not?" she asked.  "Did I look like this?  And this?"  And,
+languishing, she looked at him very sweetly after two fashions.
+
+"Something."
+
+"Oh, then I meant nothing!" she retorted with sudden vivacity.  And she
+made a face at him, laughing under his nose.  "I do that when I mean
+nothing, Monsieur!  Do you see?  But you are Gascon, and given, I fear,
+to flatter yourself."
+
+Then he saw clearly that she played with him: and resentment, chagrin,
+pique got the better of his courtesy.
+
+"I flatter myself?" he cried, his voice choked with rage.  "It may be I
+do now, Madame, but did I flatter myself when you wrote me this note?"
+And he drew it out and flourished it in her face.  "Did I imagine when I
+read this?  Or is it not in your hand?  It is a forgery, perhaps," he
+continued bitterly.  "Or it means nothing?  Nothing, this note bidding me
+be at Madame St. Lo's at an hour before midnight--it means nothing?  At
+an hour before midnight, Madame!"
+
+"On Saturday night?  The night before last night?"
+
+"On Saturday night, the night before last night!  But Madame knows
+nothing of it?  Nothing, I suppose?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and smiled cheerfully on him.  "Oh yes, I
+wrote it," she said.  "But what of that, M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, what of that?  Did you think it was written out of love
+for you?"
+
+He was staggered for the moment by her coolness.  "Out of what, then?" he
+cried hoarsely.  "Out of what, then, if not out of love?"
+
+"Why, out of pity, my little gentleman!" she answered sharply.  "And
+trouble thrown away, it seems.  Love!"  And she laughed so merrily and
+spontaneously it cut him to the heart.  "No; but you said a dainty thing
+or two, and smiled a smile; and like a fool, and like a woman, I was
+sorry for the innocent calf that bleated so prettily on its way to the
+butcher's!  And I would lock you up, and save your life, I thought, until
+the blood-letting was over.  Now you have it, M. de Tignonville, and I
+hope you like it."
+
+Like it, when every word she uttered stripped him of the selfish
+illusions in which he had wrapped himself against the blasts of
+ill-fortune?  Like it, when the prospect of her charms had bribed him
+from the path of fortitude, when for her sake he had been false to his
+mistress, to his friends, to his faith, to his cause?  Like it, when he
+knew as he listened that all was lost, and nothing gained, not even this
+poor, unworthy, shameful compensation?  Like it?  No wonder that words
+failed him, and he glared at her in rage, in misery, in shame.
+
+"Oh, if you don't like it," she continued, tossing her head after a
+momentary pause, "then you should not have come!  It is of no profit to
+glower at me, Monsieur.  You do not frighten me."
+
+"I would--I would to God I had not come!" he groaned.
+
+"And, I dare say, that you had never seen me--since you cannot win me!"
+
+"That too," he exclaimed.
+
+She was of an extraordinary levity, and at that, after staring at him a
+moment, she broke into shrill laughter.
+
+"A little more, and I'll send you to my cousin Hannibal!" she said.  "You
+do not know how anxious he is to see you.  Have you a mind," with a
+waggish look, "to play bride's man, M. de Tignonville?  Or will you give
+away the bride?  It is not too late, though soon it will be!"
+
+He winced, and from red grew pale.  "What do you mean?" he stammered;
+and, averting his eyes in shame, seeing now all the littleness, all the
+baseness of his position, "Has he--married her?" he continued.
+
+"Ho, ho!" she cried in triumph.  "I've hit you now, have I, Monsieur?
+I've hit you!"  And mocking him, "Has he--married her?" she lisped.  "No;
+but he will marry her, have no fear of that!  He will marry her.  He
+waits but to get a priest.  Would you like to see what he says?" she
+continued, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse.  "I had a note
+from him yesterday.  Would you like to see how welcome you'll be at the
+wedding?"  And she flaunted a piece of paper before his eyes.
+
+"Give it me," he said.
+
+She let him seize it the while she shrugged her shoulders.  "It's your
+affair, not mine," she said.  "See it if you like, and keep it if you
+like.  Cousin Hannibal wastes few words."
+
+That was true, for the paper contained but a dozen or fifteen words, and
+an initial by way of signature.
+
+"I may need your shaveling to-morrow afternoon.  Send him, and
+Tignonville in safeguard if he come.--H."
+
+"I can guess what use he has for a priest," she said.  "It is not to
+confess him, I warrant.  It's long, I fear, since Hannibal told his
+beads."
+
+M. de Tignonville swore.  "I would I had the confessing of him!" he said
+between his teeth.
+
+She clapped her hands in glee.  "Why should you not?" she cried.  "Why
+should you not?  'Tis time yet, since I am to send to-day and have not
+sent.  Will you be the shaveling to go confess or marry him?"  And she
+laughed recklessly.  "Will you, M. de Tignonville?  The cowl will mask
+you as well as another, and pass you through the streets better than a
+cut sleeve.  He will have both his wishes, lover and clerk in one then.
+And it will be pull monk, pull Hannibal with a vengeance."
+
+Tignonville gazed at her, and as he gazed courage and hope awoke in his
+eyes.  What if, after all, he could undo the past?  What if, after all,
+he could retrace the false step he had taken, and place himself again
+where he had been--by _her_ side?
+
+"If you meant it!" he exclaimed, his breath coming fast.  "If you only
+meant what you say, Madame."
+
+"If?" she answered, opening her eyes.  "And why should I not mean it?"
+
+"Because," he replied slowly, "cowl or no cowl, when I meet your cousin--"
+
+"'Twill go hard with him?" she cried, with a mocking laugh.  "And you
+think I fear for him.  That is it, is it?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I fear just _so much_ for him!" she retorted with contempt.  "Just so
+much!"  And coming a step nearer to Tignonville she snapped her small
+white fingers under his nose.  "Do you see?  No, M. de Tignonville," she
+continued, "you do not know Count Hannibal if you think that he fears, or
+that any fear for him.  If you will beard the lion in his den, the risk
+will be yours, not his!"
+
+The young man's face glowed.  "I take the risk!" he cried.  "And I thank
+you for the chance; that, Madame, whatever betide.  But--"
+
+"But what?" she asked, seeing that he hesitated and that his face fell.
+
+"If he afterwards learn that you have played him a trick," he said, "will
+he not punish you?"
+
+"Punish me?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+Madame laughed her high disdain.  "You do not yet know Hannibal de
+Tavannes," she said.  "He does not war with women."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  A BARGAIN.
+
+
+It is the wont of the sex to snatch at an ell where an inch is offered,
+and to press an advantage in circumstances in which a man, acknowledging
+the claims of generosity, scruples to ask for more.  The habit, now
+ingrained, may have sprung from long dependence on the male, and is one
+which a hundred instances, from the time of Judith downwards, prove to be
+at its strongest where the need is greatest.
+
+When Mademoiselle de Vrillac came out of the hour-long swoon into which
+her lover's defection had cast her, the expectation of the worst was so
+strong upon her that she could not at once credit the respite which
+Madame Carlat hastened to announce.  She could not believe that she still
+lay safe, in her own room above stairs; that she was in the care of her
+own servants, and that the chamber held no presence more hateful than
+that of the good woman who sat weeping beside her.
+
+As was to be expected, she came to herself sighing and shuddering,
+trembling with nervous exhaustion.  She looked for _him_, as soon as she
+looked for any; and even when she had seen the door locked and double-
+locked, she doubted--doubted, and shook and hid herself in the hangings
+of the bed.  The noise of the riot and rapine which prevailed in the
+city, and which reached the ear even in that locked room--and although
+the window, of paper, with an upper pane of glass, looked into a
+courtyard--was enough to drive the blood from a woman's cheeks.  But it
+was fear of the house, not of the street, fear from within, not from
+without, which impelled the girl into the darkest corner and shook her
+wits.  She could not believe that even this short respite was hers, until
+she had repeatedly heard the fact confirmed at Madame Carlat's mouth.
+
+"You are deceiving me!" she cried more than once.  And each time she
+started up in fresh terror.  "He never said that he would not return
+until to-morrow!"
+
+"He did, my lamb, he did!" the old woman answered with tears.  "Would I
+deceive you?"
+
+"He said he would not return?"
+
+"He said he would not return until to-morrow.  You had until to-morrow,
+he said."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"He would come and bring the priest with him," Madame Carlat replied
+sorrowfully.
+
+"The priest?  To-morrow!" Mademoiselle cried.  "The priest!" and she
+crouched anew with hot eyes behind the hangings of the bed, and,
+shivering, hid her face.
+
+But this for a time only.  As soon as she had made certain of the
+respite, and that she had until the morrow, her courage rose, and with it
+the instinct of which mention has been made.  Count Hannibal had granted
+a respite; short as it was, and no more than the barest humanity
+required, to grant one at all was not the act of the mere butcher who
+holds the trembling lamb, unresisting, in his hands.  It was an act--no
+more, again be it said, than humanity required--and yet an act which
+bespoke an expectation of some return, of some correlative advantage.  It
+was not in the part of the mere brigand.  Something had been granted.
+Something short of the utmost in the captor's power had been exacted.  He
+had shown that there were things he would not do.
+
+Then might not something more be won from him?  A further delay, another
+point; something, no matter what, which could be turned to advantage?
+With the brigand it is not possible to bargain.  But who gives a little
+may give more; who gives a day may give a week; who gives a week may give
+a month.  And a month?  Her heart leapt up.  A month seemed a lifetime,
+an eternity, to her who had but until to-morrow!
+
+Yet there was one consideration which might have daunted a spirit less
+brave.  To obtain aught from Tavannes it was needful to ask him, and to
+ask him it was needful to see him; and to see him _before_ that to-morrow
+which meant so much to her.  It was necessary, in a word, to run some
+risk; but without risk the card could not be played, and she did not
+hesitate.  It might turn out that she was wrong, that the man was not
+only pitiless and without bowels of mercy, but lacked also the shred of
+decency for which she gave him credit, and on which she counted.  In that
+case, if she sent for him--but she would not consider that case.
+
+The position of the window, while it increased the women's safety,
+debarred them from all knowledge of what was going forward, except that
+which their ears afforded them.  They had no means of judging whether
+Tavannes remained in the house or had sallied forth to play his part in
+the work of murder.  Madame Carlat, indeed, had no desire to know
+anything.  In that room above stairs, with the door double-locked, lay a
+hope of safety in the present, and of ultimate deliverance; there she had
+a respite from terror, as long as she kept the world outside.  To her,
+therefore, the notion of sending for Tavannes, or communicating with him,
+came as a thunderbolt.  Was her mistress mad?  Did she wish to court her
+fate?  To reach Tavannes they must apply to his riders, for Carlat and
+the men-servants were confined above.  Those riders were grim, brutal
+men, who might resort to rudeness on their own account.  And Madame,
+clinging in a paroxysm of terror to her mistress, suggested all manner of
+horrors, one on top of the other, until she increased her own terror
+tenfold.  And yet, to do her justice, nothing that even her frenzied
+imagination suggested exceeded the things which the streets of Paris,
+fruitful mother of horrors, were witnessing at that very hour.  As we now
+know.
+
+For it was noon--or a little more--of Sunday, August the twenty-fourth,
+"a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently find leisure
+to kill and plunder."  From the bridges, and particularly from the stone
+bridge of Notre Dame--while they lay safe in that locked room, and
+Tignonville crouched in his haymow--Huguenots less fortunate were being
+cast, bound hand and foot, into the Seine.  On the river bank Spire
+Niquet, the bookman, was being burnt over a slow fire, fed with his own
+books.  In their houses, Ramus the scholar and Goujon the sculptor--than
+whom Paris has neither seen nor deserved a greater--were being butchered
+like sheep; and in the Valley of Misery, now the Quai de la Megisserie,
+seven hundred persons who had sought refuge in the prisons were being
+beaten to death with bludgeons.  Nay, at this hour--a little sooner or a
+little later, what matters it?--M. de Tignonville's own cousin, Madame
+d'Yverne, the darling of the Louvre the day before, perished in the hands
+of the mob; and the sister of M. de Taverny, equally ill-fated, died in
+the same fashion, after being dragged through the streets.
+
+Madame Carlat, then, went not a whit beyond the mark in her argument.  But
+Mademoiselle had made up her mind, and was not to be dissuaded.
+
+"If I am to be Monsieur's wife," she said with quivering nostrils, "shall
+I fear his servants?"
+
+And opening the door herself, for the others would not, she called.  The
+man who answered was a Norman; and short of stature, and wrinkled and low-
+browed of feature, with a thatch of hair and a full beard, he seemed the
+embodiment of the women's apprehensions.  Moreover, his _patois_ of the
+cider-land was little better than German to them; their southern, softer
+tongue was sheer Italian to him.  But he seemed not ill-disposed, or
+Mademoiselle's air overawed him; and presently she made him understand,
+and with a nod he descended to carry her message.
+
+Then Mademoiselle's heart began to beat; and beat more quickly when she
+heard _his_ step--alas! she knew it already, knew it from all others--on
+the stairs.  The table was set, the card must be played, to win or lose.
+It might be that with the low opinion he held of women he would think her
+reconciled to her lot; he would think this an overture, a step towards
+kinder treatment, one more proof of the inconstancy of the lower and the
+weaker sex, made to be men's playthings.  And at that thought her eyes
+grew hot with rage.  But if it were so, she must still put up with it.
+She must still put up with it!  She had sent for him, and he was
+coming--he was at the door!
+
+He entered, and she breathed more freely.  For once his face lacked the
+sneer, the look of smiling possession, which she had come to know and
+hate.  It was grave, expectant, even suspicious; still harsh and dark,
+akin, as she now observed, to the low-browed, furrowed face of the rider
+who had summoned him.  But the offensive look was gone, and she could
+breathe.
+
+He closed the door behind him, but he did not advance into the room.
+
+"At your pleasure, Mademoiselle?" he said simply.  "You sent for me, I
+think."
+
+She was on her feet, standing before him with something of the
+submissiveness of Roxana before her conqueror.
+
+"I did," she said; and stopped at that, her hand to her side as if she
+could not continue.  But presently in a low voice, "I have heard," she
+went on, "what you said, Monsieur, after I lost consciousness."
+
+"Yes?" he said; and was silent.  Nor did he lose his watchful look.
+
+"I am obliged to you for your thought of me," she continued in a faint
+voice, "and I shall be still further obliged--I speak to you thus quickly
+and thus early--if you will grant me a somewhat longer time."
+
+"Do you mean--if I will postpone our marriage?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"It is impossible!"
+
+"Do not say that," she cried, raising her voice impulsively.  "I appeal
+to your generosity.  And for a short, a very short, time only."
+
+"It is impossible," he answered quietly.  "And for reasons, Mademoiselle.
+In the first place, I can more easily protect my wife.  In the second, I
+am even now summoned to the Louvre, and should be on my way thither.  By
+to-morrow evening, unless I am mistaken in the business on which I am
+required, I shall be on my way to a distant province with royal letters.
+It is essential that our marriage take place before I go."
+
+"Why?" she asked stubbornly.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "Why?" he repeated.  "Can you ask,
+Mademoiselle, after the events of last night?  Because, if you please, I
+do not wish to share the fate of M. de Tignonville.  Because in these
+days life is uncertain, and death too certain.  Because it was our turn
+last night, and it may be the turn of your friends--to-morrow night!"
+
+"Then some have escaped?" she cried.
+
+He smiled.  "I am glad to find you so shrewd," he replied.  "In an honest
+wife it is an excellent quality.  Yes, Mademoiselle; one or two."
+
+"Who?  Who?  I pray you tell me."
+
+"M. de Montgomery, who slept beyond the river, for one; and the Vidame,
+and some with him.  M. de Biron, whom I count a Huguenot, and who holds
+the Arsenal in the King's teeth, for another.  And a few more.  Enough,
+in a word, Mademoiselle, to keep us wakeful.  It is impossible,
+therefore, for me to postpone the fulfilment of your promise."
+
+"A promise on conditions!" she retorted, in rage that she could win no
+more.  And every line of her splendid figure, every tone of her voice
+flamed sudden, hot rebellion.  "I do not go for nothing!  You gave me the
+lives of all in the house, Monsieur!  Of all!" she repeated with passion.
+"And all are not here!  Before I marry you, you must show me M. de
+Tignonville alive and safe!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "He has taken himself off," he said.  "It is
+naught to me what happens to him now."
+
+"It is all to me!" she retorted.
+
+At that he glared at her, the veins of his forehead swelling suddenly.
+But after a seeming struggle with himself he put the insult by, perhaps
+for future reckoning and account.
+
+"I did what I could," he said sullenly.  "Had I willed it he had died
+there and then in the room below.  I gave him his life.  If he has risked
+it anew and lost it, it is naught to me."
+
+"It was his life you gave me," she repeated stubbornly.  "His life--and
+the others.  But that is not all," she continued; "you promised me a
+minister."
+
+He nodded, smiling sourly to himself, as if this confirmed a suspicion he
+had entertained.
+
+"Or a priest," he said.
+
+"No, a minister."
+
+"If one could be obtained.  If not, a priest."
+
+"No, it was to be at my will; and I will a minister!  I will a minister!"
+she cried passionately.  "Show me M. de Tignonville alive, and bring me a
+minister of my faith, and I will keep my promise, M. de Tavannes.  Have
+no fear of that.  But otherwise, I will not."
+
+"You will not?" he cried.  "You will not?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"You will not marry me?"
+
+"No!"
+
+The moment she had said it fear seized her, and she could have fled from
+him, screaming.  The flash of his eyes, the sudden passion of his face,
+burned themselves into her memory.  She thought for a second that he
+would spring on her and strike her down.  Yet though the women behind her
+held their breath, she faced him, and did not quail; and to that, she
+fancied, she owed it that he controlled himself.
+
+"You will not?" he repeated, as if he could not understand such
+resistance to his will--as if he could not credit his ears.  "You will
+not?"  But after that, when he had said it three times, he laughed; a
+laugh, however, with a snarl in it that chilled her blood.
+
+"You bargain, do you?" he said.  "You will have the last tittle of the
+price, will you?  And have thought of this and that to put me off, and to
+gain time until your lover, who is all to you, comes to save you?  Oh,
+clever girl! clever!  But have you thought where you stand--woman?  Do
+you know that if I gave the word to my people they would treat you as the
+commonest baggage that tramps the Froidmantel?  Do you know that it rests
+with me to save you, or to throw you to the wolves whose ravening you
+hear?"  And he pointed to the window.  "Minister?  Priest?" he continued
+grimly.  "_Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, I stand astonished at my moderation.
+You chatter to me of ministers and priests, and the one or the other,
+when it might be neither!  When you are as much and as hopelessly in my
+power to-day as the wench in my kitchen!  You!  You flout me, and make
+terms with me!  You!"
+
+And he came so near her with his dark harsh face, his tone rose so
+menacing on the last word, that her nerves, shattered before, gave way,
+and, unable to control herself, she flinched with a low cry, thinking he
+would strike her.
+
+He did not follow, nor move to follow; but he laughed a low laugh of
+content.  And his eyes devoured her.
+
+"Ho! ho!" he said.  "We are not so brave as we pretend to be, it seems.
+And yet you dared to chaffer with me?  You thought to thwart me--Tavannes!
+_Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, to what did you trust?  To what did you trust?
+Ay, and to what do you trust?"
+
+She knew that by the movement which fear had forced from her she had
+jeopardized everything.  That she stood to lose all and more than all
+which she had thought to win by a bold front.  A woman less brave, of a
+spirit less firm, would have given up the contest, and have been glad to
+escape so.  But this woman, though her bloodless face showed that she
+knew what cause she had for fear, and though her heart was indeed sick
+with terror, held her ground at the point to which she had retreated.  She
+played her last card.
+
+"To what do I trust?" she muttered with trembling lips.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," he answered between his teeth.  "To what do you
+trust--that you play with Tavannes?"
+
+"To his honour, Monsieur," she answered faintly.  "And to your promise."
+
+He looked at her with his mocking smile.  "And yet," he sneered, "you
+thought a moment ago that I should strike you.  You thought that I should
+beat you!  And now it is my honour and my promise!  Oh, clever, clever,
+Mademoiselle!  'Tis so that women make fools of men.  I knew that
+something of this kind was on foot when you sent for me, for I know women
+and their ways.  But, let me tell you, it is an ill time to speak of
+honour when the streets are red!  And of promises when the King's word is
+'No faith with a heretic!'"
+
+"Yet you will keep yours," she said bravely.
+
+He did not answer at once, and hope which was almost dead in her breast
+began to recover; nay, presently sprang up erect.  For the man hesitated,
+it was evident; he brooded with a puckered brow and gloomy eyes; an
+observer might have fancied that he traced pain as well as doubt in his
+face.  At last--
+
+"There is a thing," he said slowly and with a sort of glare at her,
+"which, it may be, you have not reckoned.  You press me now, and will
+stand on your terms and your conditions, your _ifs_ and your _unlesses_!
+You will have the most from me, and the bargain and a little beside the
+bargain!  But I would have you think if you are wise.  Bethink you how it
+will be between us when you are my wife--if you press me so now,
+Mademoiselle.  How will it sweeten things then?  How will it soften them?
+And to what, I pray you, will you trust for fair treatment then, if you
+will be so against me now?"
+
+She shuddered.  "To the mercy of my husband," she said in a low voice.
+And her chin sank on her breast.
+
+"You will be content to trust to that?" he answered grimly.  And his tone
+and the lifting of his brow promised little clemency.  "Bethink you!  'Tis
+your rights now, and your terms, Mademoiselle!  And then it will be only
+my mercy--Madame."
+
+"I am content," she muttered faintly.
+
+"And the Lord have mercy on my soul, is what you would add," he retorted,
+"so much trust have you in my mercy!  And you are right!  You are right,
+since you have played this trick on me.  But as you will.  If you will
+have it so, have it so!  You shall stand on your conditions now; you
+shall have your pennyweight and full advantage, and the rigour of the
+pact.  But afterwards--afterwards, Madame de Tavannes--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, for at the first word which granted her
+petition, Mademoiselle had sunk down on the low wooden window-seat beside
+which she stood, and, cowering into its farthest corner, her face hidden
+on her arms, had burst into violent weeping.  Her hair, hastily knotted
+up in the hurry of the previous night, hung in a thick plait to the curve
+of her waist; the nape of her neck showed beside it milk-white.  The man
+stood awhile contemplating her in silence, his gloomy eyes watching the
+pitiful movement of her shoulders, the convulsive heaving of her figure.
+But he did not offer to touch her, and at length he turned about.  First
+one and then the other of her women quailed and shrank under his gaze; he
+seemed about to add something.  But he did not speak.  The sentence he
+had left unfinished, the long look he bent on the weeping girl as he
+turned from her, spoke more eloquently of the future than a score of
+orations.
+
+"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE.
+
+
+It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for
+Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the
+higher name--should so entirely possess the souls of those who harbour it
+that the greatest events and the most astounding catastrophes, even
+measures which set their mark for all time on a nation, are to them of
+importance only so far as they affect the pursuit of the fair one.
+
+As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes,
+beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires of
+his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or wonder.
+He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughter-house, where for a week a
+masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors and the
+close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn garments,
+broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps.  But he saw all with eyes which
+in all and everywhere, among living and dead, sought only Tignonville;
+Tignonville first, and next a heretic minister, with enough of life in
+him to do his office.
+
+Probably it was to this that one man hunted through Paris owed his escape
+that day.  He sprang from a narrow passage full in Tavannes' view, and,
+hair on end, his eyes starting from his head, ran blindly--as a hare will
+run when chased--along the street to meet Count Hannibal's company.  The
+man's face was wet with the dews of death, his lungs seemed cracking, his
+breath hissed from him as he ran.  His pursuers were hard on him, and,
+seeing him headed by Count Hannibal's party, yelled in triumph, holding
+him for dead.  And dead he would have been within thirty seconds had
+Tavannes played his part.  But his thoughts were elsewhere.  Either he
+took the poor wretch for Tignonville, or for the minister on whom his
+mind was running; anyway he suffered him to slip under the belly of his
+horse; then, to make matters worse, he wheeled to follow him in so
+untimely and clumsy a fashion that his horse blocked the way and stopped
+the pursuers in their tracks.  The quarry slipped into an alley and
+vanished.  The hunters stood and blasphemed, and even for a moment seemed
+inclined to resent the mistake.  But Tavannes smiled; a broader smile
+lightened the faces of the six iron-clad men behind him; and for some
+reason the gang of ruffians thought better of it and slunk aside.
+
+There are hard men, who feel scorn of the things which in the breasts of
+others excite pity.  Tavannes' lip curled as he rode on through the
+streets, looking this way and that, and seeing what a King twenty-two
+years old had made of his capital.  His lip curled most of all when he
+came, passing between the two tennis-courts, to the east gate of the
+Louvre, and found the entrance locked and guarded, and all communication
+between city and palace cut off.  Such a proof of unkingly panic, in a
+crisis wrought by the King himself, astonished him less a few minutes
+later, when, the keys having been brought and the door opened, he entered
+the courtyard of the fortress.
+
+Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and
+arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,
+from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests
+rose without ceasing.  The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped
+the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and
+heightened their exaggerated and restless movements.  To a calm eye they
+seemed like men acting in a nightmare.  Their fitful talk and disjointed
+gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,
+brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the
+terrible.  There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and
+some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and
+bragged insanely of the part they had played.  But perhaps the most
+striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for
+fresh excitement.  In the space of time it took him to pass through them,
+Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city;
+that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had
+escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the
+pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the
+fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then
+entering by the Porte de Bucy.  Again that Biron had surrendered the
+Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead,
+that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre,
+that--
+
+And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot
+of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the
+new facade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling
+contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower
+removed, frowned unimpeded at one another.  But what was this which lay
+along the foot of the new Italian wall?  This, round which some stood,
+gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long
+downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a
+window?
+
+Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of
+buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much
+spilled blood.  From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical
+laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the
+court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she
+turned about and struggled as she came.  Once outside she hung back,
+giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting
+Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and
+a shriek.  But before he had taken four paces she was out again.
+
+He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back to
+the woman he had left weeping in the upper room.  Then he turned about
+again and stood to count the dead.  He identified Piles, identified
+Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers had robbed of
+the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais.  He made his reckoning with an
+unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and stared, and moved from
+one to another; had he not seen the slaughter about "_le petit homme_" at
+Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched fields?  But when a bystander,
+smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest on Soubise, and with his finger
+pointed the jest, he had the same hard unmoved face for the gibe as for
+the dead.  And the jester shrank away, abashed and perplexed by his stare
+and his reticence.
+
+Halfway up the staircase to the great gallery or guard-room above, Count
+Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in drunken
+slumber on a seat in a recess.  In the gallery to which he passed on
+without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with arquebusiers
+and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking in whispers; or
+peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the hall, where the
+querulous voice of the King rose now and again above the hum.  As
+Tavannes moved that way, Nancay, in the act of passing out, booted and
+armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.
+
+"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he
+dared betray.  "The King has asked for you twice."
+
+"I am going to him.  And you?  Whither in such a hurry, M. Nancay?"
+
+"To Chatillon."
+
+"On pleasant business?"
+
+"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nancay replied, with unexpected
+temper.  "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a
+grin.  And he went on.
+
+The gleam of malice in the man's eye warned Tavannes to pause.  He looked
+round for some one who might be in the secret, saw the Provost of the
+Merchants, and approached him.
+
+"What's amiss, M. le Charron?" he asked.  "Is not the affair going as it
+should?"
+
+"'Tis about the Arsenal, M. le Comte," the Provost answered busily.  "M.
+de Biron is harbouring the vermin there.  He has lowered the portcullis
+and pointed his culverins over the gate and will not yield it or listen
+to reason.  The King would bring him to terms, but no one will venture
+himself inside with the message.  Rats in a trap, you know, bite hard,
+and care little whom they bite."
+
+"I begin to understand."
+
+"Precisely, M. le Comte.  His Majesty would have sent M. de Nancay.  But
+he elected to go to Chatillon, to seize the young brood there.  The
+Admiral's children, you comprehend."
+
+"Whose teeth are not yet grown!  He was wise."
+
+"To be sure, M. de Tavannes, to be sure.  But the King was annoyed, and
+on top of that came a priest with complaints, and if I may make so bold
+as to advise you, you will not--"
+
+But Tavannes fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty, and
+with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the warning which the other had
+it in his mind to give.  A moment and he reached the inner circle, and
+there halted, disconcerted, nay taken aback.  For as soon as he showed
+his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro like a caged beast, before
+a table at which three clerks knelt on cushions, espied him, and stood
+still.  With a glare of something like madness in his eyes, Charles
+raised his hand, and with a shaking finger singled him out.
+
+"So, by G-d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy.  And
+he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him.  "You are
+there, are you?  And you are not afraid to show your face?  I tell you,
+it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is said
+everywhere Guise does all and serves God, and we follow because we must!
+It's you, and such as you, are stumbling-blocks to our good folk of
+Paris!  Are you traitor, sirrah?" he continued with passion, "or are you
+of our brother Alencon's opinions, that you traverse our orders to the
+damnation of your soul and our discredit?  Are you traitor?  Or are you
+heretic?  Or what are you?  God in heaven, will you answer me, man, or
+shall I send you where you will find your tongue?"
+
+"I know not of what your Majesty accuses me," Count Hannibal answered,
+with a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"I?  'Tis not I," the King retorted.  His hair hung damp on his brow, and
+he dried his hands continually; while his gestures had the ill-measured
+and eccentric violence of an epileptic.  "Here, you!  Speak, father, and
+confound him!"
+
+Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest
+whom his brother had ridden down that morning.  Father Pezelay's pale
+hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one
+temple and part of his face.  But below the bandage the flame of his eyes
+was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue.  To the King he had
+come--for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's
+presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance was
+come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to grow
+longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like.  He stood there a fitting
+representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles and his
+successor--the last of a doomed line--alternately used as tool or feared
+as master; and to which the most debased and the most immoral of courts
+paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage.  Even in the midst
+of the drunken, shameless courtiers--who stood, if they stood for
+anything, for that other influence of the day, the Renaissance--he was to
+be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it.  He knew that in the eyes
+not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten who listened to him, a priest
+was more sacred than a virgin, and a tonsure than all the virtues of
+spotless innocence.
+
+"Shall the King give with one hand and withdraw with the other?" the
+priest began, in a voice hoarse yet strident, a voice borne high above
+the crowd on the wings of passion.  "Shall he spare of the best of the
+men and the maidens whom God hath doomed, whom the Church hath devoted,
+whom the King hath given?  Is the King's hand shortened or his word
+annulled that a man does as he forbiddeth and leaves undone what he
+commandeth?  Is God mocked?  Woe, woe unto you," he continued, turning
+swiftly, arms uplifted, towards Tavannes, "who please yourself with the
+red and white of their maidens and take of the best of the spoil, sparing
+where the King's word is 'Spare not'!  Who strike at Holy Church with the
+sword!  Who--"
+
+"Answer, sirrah!" Charles cried, spurning the floor in his fury.  He
+could not listen long to any man.  "Is it so?  Is it so?  Do you do these
+things?"
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer, when a
+thick, drunken voice rose from the crowd behind him.
+
+"Is it what?  Eh!  Is it what?" it droned.  And a figure with bloodshot
+eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the
+obsequious circle.  It was Marshal Tavannes.  "Eh, what?  You'd beard the
+King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay,
+his hand on his sword.  "Were you a priest ten times--"
+
+"Silence!" Charles cried, almost foaming with rage at this fresh
+interruption.  "It's not he, fool!  'Tis your pestilent brother."
+
+"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal answered with a
+menacing gesture.  He was sober enough, it appeared, to hear what was
+said, but not to comprehend its drift; and this caused a titter, which
+immediately excited his rage.  He turned and seized the nearest laugher
+by the ear.  "Insolent!" he cried.  "I will teach you to laugh when the
+King speaks!  Puppy!  Who laughs at his Majesty or touches my brother has
+to do with Tavannes!"
+
+The King, in a rage that almost deprived him of speech, stamped the floor
+twice.
+
+"Idiot!" he cried.  "Imbecile!  Let the man go!  'Tis not he!  'Tis your
+heretic brother, I tell you!  By all the Saints!  By the body of--" and
+he poured forth a flood of oaths.  "Will you listen to me and be silent!
+Will you--your brother--"
+
+"If he be not your Majesty's servant, I will kill him with this sword!"
+the irrepressible Marshal struck in.  "As I have killed ten to-day!  Ten!"
+And, staggering back, he only saved himself from falling by clutching
+Chicot about the neck.
+
+"Steady, my pretty Marechale!" the jester cried, chucking him under the
+chin with one hand, while with some difficulty he supported him with the
+other--for he, too, was far from sober--
+
+   "Pretty Margot, toy with me,
+   Maiden bashful--"
+
+"Silence!" Charles cried, darting forth his long arms in a fury of
+impatience.  "God, have I killed every man of sense?  Are you all gone
+mad?  Silence!  Do you hear?  Silence!  And let me hear what he has to
+say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal.  "And look you, sirrah," he
+continued with a curse, "see that it be to the purpose!"
+
+"If it be a question of your Majesty's service," Tavannes answered, "and
+obedience to your Majesty's orders, I am deeper in it than he who stands
+there!" with a sign towards the priest.  "I give my word for that.  And I
+will prove it."
+
+"How, sir?" Charles cried.  "How, how, how?  How will you prove it?"
+
+"By doing for you, sire, what he will not do!" Tavannes answered
+scornfully.  "Let him stand out, and if he will serve his Church as I
+will serve my King--"
+
+"Blaspheme not!" cried the priest.
+
+"Chatter not!" Tavannes retorted hardily, "but do!  Better is he," he
+continued, "who takes a city than he who slays women!  Nay, sire," he
+went on hurriedly, seeing the King start, "be not angry, but hear me!  You
+would send to Biron, to the Arsenal?  You seek a messenger, sire?  Then
+let the good father be the man.  Let him take your Majesty's will to
+Biron, and let him see the Grand Master face to face, and bring him to
+reason.  Or, if he will not, I will!  Let that be the test!"
+
+"Ay, ay!" cried Marshal de Tavannes, "you say well, brother!  Let him!"
+
+"And if he will not, I will!" Tavannes repeated.  "Let that be the test,
+sire."
+
+The King wheeled suddenly to Father Pezelay.  "You hear, father?" he
+said.  "What say you?"
+
+The priest's face grew sallow, and more sallow.  He knew that the walls
+of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of
+Biron's would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning
+culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children, their
+wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught but to
+stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb from limb
+before they died!  The challenge, therefore, was one-sided and unfair;
+but for that very reason it shook him.  The astuteness of the man who,
+taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him with dread.  He
+dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the offer.  And
+meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their beards, were on
+him.  At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which had lost its
+boldness and assurance.
+
+"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but
+for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word, and
+set at nought his Christian orders.  For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or
+no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.'  For you go but to your
+own, and your own will receive you!"
+
+"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.
+
+"At your command?  No!" the priest shrieked with passion.  "His Majesty
+knows whether I serve him."
+
+"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve
+me when it pleases you!  That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood
+of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in
+mine!  You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow!  Ay, you will!
+you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with
+a fearful oath.  "The dead are as good servants as you!  Foucauld was
+better!  Foucauld?  Foucauld?  Ah, my God!"
+
+And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so
+often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst
+into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with
+the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer
+of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the
+cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the
+shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for
+their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes,
+trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.
+
+One looked at another in consternation.  Fear grew in eyes that a moment
+before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic.  If
+_he_ changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed
+on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe?  Whose turn might it not
+be to-morrow?  Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done
+this day?  Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before,
+shuddered and glanced behind them.  It was as if the dead who lay stark
+without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose
+shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall;
+and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold
+breath in the living ears, "A reckoning!  A reckoning!  As I am, thou
+shalt be!"
+
+It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with his
+hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward.
+
+"Nay, sire," he cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and
+seemed to challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed,
+yet will not I!  What we have done we have done!  So be it!  The dead are
+dead!  So be it!  For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who
+will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition!  I have
+said I will go, and I go, sire.  And you, churchman," he continued,
+turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to church!  To
+church, shaveling!  Go, watch and pray for us!  Fast and flog for us!
+Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down!  For it is all,
+it seems, you will do for your King!"
+
+Charles turned.  "Silence, railer!" he said in a broken voice.  "Sow no
+more troubles!  Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I see
+blood, blood, blood everywhere!  Blood?  Ah, God, shall I from this time
+see anything else?  But there is no turning back.  There is no undoing.
+So, do you go to Biron.  And do you," he went on, sullenly addressing
+Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful he should
+know."
+
+"'Tis done, sire!" the Marshal cried, with a hiccough.  "Come, brother!"
+
+But when the two, the courtiers making quick way for them, had passed
+down the hall to the door, the Marshal tapped Hannibal's sleeve.
+
+"It was touch and go," he muttered; it was plain he had been more sober
+than he seemed.  "Mind you, it does not do to thwart our little master in
+his fits!  Remember that another time, or worse will come of it, brother.
+As it is, you came out of it finely and tripped that black devil's heels
+to a marvel!  But you won't be so mad as to go to Biron?"
+
+"Yes," Count Hannibal answered coldly.  "I shall go."
+
+"Better not!  Better not!" the Marshal answered.  "'Twill be easier to go
+in than to come out--with a whole throat!  Have you taken wild cats in
+the hollow of a tree?  The young first, and then the she-cat?  Well, it
+will be that!  Take my advice, brother.  Have after Montgomery, if you
+please, ride with Nancay to Chatillon--he is mounting now--go where you
+please out of Paris, but don't go there!  Biron hates us, hates me.  And
+for the King, if he do not see you for a few days, 'twill blow over in a
+week."
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders.  "No," he said, "I shall go."
+
+The Marshal stared a moment.  "Morbleu!" he said, "why?  'Tis not to
+please the King, I know.  What do you think to find there, brother?"
+
+"A minister," Hannibal answered gently.  "I want one with life in him,
+and they are scarce in the open.  So I must to covert after him."  And,
+twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he passed across
+the court to the gate, and to his horses.
+
+The Marshal went back laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the
+hall, jostled by accident a gentleman who was passing out.
+
+"What is it?" the Gascon cried hotly; for it was Chicot he had jostled.
+
+"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal hiccoughed.  And,
+smiting his thigh anew, he went off into another fit of laughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  DIPLOMACY.
+
+
+Where the old wall of Paris, of which no vestige remains, ran down on the
+east to the north bank of the river, the space in the angle between the
+Seine and the ramparts beyond the Rue St. Pol wore at this date an aspect
+typical of the troubles of the time.  Along the waterside the gloomy old
+Palace of St. Pol, once the residence of the mad King Charles the
+Sixth--and his wife, the abandoned Isabeau de Baviere--sprawled its maze
+of mouldering courts and ruined galleries; a dreary monument of the
+Gothic days which were passing from France.  Its spacious curtilage and
+dark pleasaunces covered all the ground between the river and the Rue St.
+Antoine; and north of this, under the shadow of the eight great towers of
+the Bastille, which looked, four outward to check the stranger, four
+inward to bridle the town, a second palace, beginning where St. Pol
+ended, carried the realm of decay to the city wall.
+
+This second palace was the Hotel des Tournelles, a fantastic medley of
+turrets, spires, and gables, that equally with its neighbour recalled the
+days of the English domination; it had been the abode of the Regent
+Bedford.  From his time it had remained for a hundred years the town
+residence of the kings of France; but the death of Henry II., slain in
+its lists by the lance of the same Montgomery who was this day fleeing
+for his life before Guise, had given his widow a distaste for it.
+Catherine de Medicis, her sons, and the Court had abandoned it; already
+its gardens lay a tangled wilderness, its roofs let in the rain, rats
+played where kings had slept; and in "our palace of the Tournelles"
+reigned only silence and decay.  Unless, indeed, as was whispered abroad,
+the grim shade of the eleventh Louis sometimes walked in its desolate
+precincts.
+
+In the innermost angle between the ramparts and the river, shut off from
+the rest of Paris by the decaying courts and enceintes of these forsaken
+palaces, stood the Arsenal.  Destroyed in great part by the explosion of
+a powder-mill a few years earlier, it was in the main new; and by reason
+of its river frontage, which terminated at the ruined tower of Billy, and
+its proximity to the Bastille, it was esteemed one of the keys of Paris.
+It was the appanage of the Master of the Ordnance, and within its walls
+M. de Biron, a Huguenot in politics, if not in creed, who held the office
+at this time, had secured himself on the first alarm.  During the day he
+had admitted a number of refugees, whose courage or good luck had led
+them to his gate; and as night fell--on such a carnage as the hapless
+city had not beheld since the great slaughter of the Armagnacs, one
+hundred and fifty-four years earlier--the glow of his matches through the
+dusk, and the sullen tramp of his watchmen as they paced the walls,
+indicated that there was still one place in Paris where the King's will
+did not run.
+
+In comparison of the disorder which prevailed in the city, a deadly quiet
+reigned here; a stillness so chill that a timid man must have stood and
+hesitated to approach.  But a stranger who about nightfall rode down the
+street towards the entrance, a single footman running at his stirrup,
+only nodded a stern approval of the preparations.  As he drew nearer he
+cast an attentive eye this way and that; nor stayed until a hoarse
+challenge brought him up when he had come within six horses' lengths of
+the Arsenal gate.  He reined up then, and raising his voice, asked in
+clear tones for M. de Biron.
+
+"Go," he continued boldly, "tell the Grand Master that one from the King
+is here, and would speak with him."
+
+"From the King of France?" the officer on the gate asked.
+
+"Surely!  Is there more than one king in France?"
+
+A curse and a bitter cry of "King?  King Herod!" were followed by a
+muttered discussion that, in the ears of one of the two who waited in the
+gloom below, boded little good.  The two could descry figures moving to
+and fro before the faint red light of the smouldering matches; and
+presently a man on the gate kindled a torch, and held it so as to fling
+its light downward.  The stranger's attendant cowered behind the horse.
+
+"Have a care, my lord!" he whispered.  "They are aiming at us!"
+
+If so the rider's bold front and unmoved demeanour gave them pause.
+Presently, "I will send for the Grand Master" the man who had spoken
+before announced.  "In whose name, monsieur?"
+
+"No matter," the stranger answered.  "Say, one from the King."
+
+"You are alone?"
+
+"I shall enter alone."
+
+The assurance seemed to be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!" and
+after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the portcullis
+creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch.  The horseman
+waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid to the ground,
+threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked across.  In an instant
+he left behind him the dark street, the river, and the sounds of outrage,
+which the night breeze bore from the farther bank, and found himself
+within the vaulted gateway, in a bright glare of light, the centre of a
+ring of gleaming eyes and angry faces.
+
+The light blinded him for a few seconds; but the guards, on their side,
+were in no better case.  For the stranger was masked; and in their
+ignorance who it was looked at them through the slits in the black velvet
+they stared, disconcerted, and at a loss.  There were some there with
+naked weapons in their hands who would have struck him through had they
+known who he was; and more who would have stood aside while the deed was
+done.  But the uncertainty--that and the masked man's tone paralyzed
+them.  For they reflected that he might be anyone.  Conde, indeed, stood
+too small, but Navarre, if he lived, might fill that cloak; or Guise, or
+Anjou, or the King himself.  And while some would not have scrupled to
+strike the blood royal, more would have been quick to protect and avenge
+it.  And so before the dark uncertainty of the mask, before the riddle of
+the smiling eyes which glittered through the slits, they stared
+irresolute; until a hand, the hand of one bolder than his fellows, was
+raised to pluck away the screen.
+
+The unknown dealt the fellow a buffet with his fist.  "Down, rascal!" he
+said hoarsely.  "And you"--to the officer--"show me instantly to M. de
+Biron!"
+
+But the lieutenant, who stood in fear of his men, looked at him
+doubtfully.
+
+"Nay," he said, "not so fast!"  And one of the others, taking the lead,
+cried, "No!  We may have no need of M. de Biron.  Your name, monsieur,
+first."
+
+With a quick movement the stranger gripped the officer's wrist.
+
+"Tell your master," he said, "that he who clasped his wrist _thus_ on the
+night of Pentecost is here, and would speak with him!  And say, mark you,
+that I will come to him, not he to me!"
+
+The sign and the tone imposed upon the boldest.  Two-thirds of the watch
+were Huguenots, who burned to avenge the blood of their fellows; and
+these, overriding their officer, had agreed to deal with the intruder, if
+a Papegot, without recourse to the Grand Master, whose moderation they
+dreaded.  A knife-thrust in the ribs, and another body in the ditch--why
+not, when such things were done outside?  But even these doubted now; and
+M. Peridol, the lieutenant, reading in the eyes of his men the suspicions
+which he had himself conceived, was only anxious to obey, if they would
+let him.  So gravely was he impressed, indeed, by the bearing of the
+unknown that he turned when he had withdrawn, and came back to assure
+himself that the men meditated no harm in his absence; nor until he had
+exchanged a whisper with one of them would he leave them and go.
+
+While he was gone on his errand the envoy leaned against the wall of the
+gateway, and, with his chin sunk on his breast and his mind fallen into
+reverie, seemed unconscious of the dark glances of which he was the
+target.  He remained in this position until the officer came back,
+followed by a man with a lanthorn.  Their coming roused the unknown, who,
+invited to follow Peridol, traversed two courts without remark, and in
+the same silence entered a building in the extreme eastern corner of the
+enceinte abutting on the ruined Tour de Billy.  Here, in an upper floor,
+the Governor of the Arsenal had established his temporary lodging.
+
+The chamber into which the stranger was introduced betrayed the haste in
+which it had been prepared for its occupant.  Two silver lamps which hung
+from the beams of the unceiled roof shed light on a medley of arms and
+inlaid armour, of parchments, books and steel caskets, which encumbered
+not the tables only, but the stools and chests that, after the fashion of
+that day, stood formally along the arras.  In the midst of the disorder,
+on the bare floor, walked the man who, more than any other, had been
+instrumental in drawing the Huguenots to Paris--and to their doom.  It
+was no marvel that the events of the day, the surprise and horror, still
+rode his mind; nor wonderful that even he, who passed for a model of
+stiffness and reticence, betrayed for once the indignation which filled
+his breast.  Until the officer had withdrawn and closed the door he did,
+indeed, keep silence; standing beside the table and eyeing his visitor
+with a lofty porte and a stern glance.  But the moment he was assured
+that they were alone he spoke.
+
+"Your Highness may unmask now," he said, making no effort to hide his
+contempt.  "Yet were you well advised to take the precaution, since you
+had hardly come at me in safety without it.  Had those who keep the gate
+seen you, I would not have answered for your Highness's life.  The more
+shame," he continued vehemently, "on the deeds of this day which have
+compelled the brother of a king of France to hide his face in his own
+capital and in his own fortress.  For I dare to say, Monsieur, what no
+other will say, now the Admiral is dead.  You have brought back the days
+of the Armagnacs.  You have brought bloody days and an evil name on
+France, and I pray God that you may not pay in your turn what you have
+exacted.  But if you continue to be advised by M. de Guise, this I will
+say, Monsieur"--and his voice fell low and stern.  "Burgundy slew
+Orleans, indeed; but he came in his turn to the Bridge of Montereau."
+
+"You take me for Monsieur?" the unknown asked.  And it was plain that he
+smiled under his mask.
+
+Biron's face altered.  "I take you," he answered sharply, "for him whose
+sign you sent me."
+
+"The wisest are sometimes astray," the other answered with a low laugh.
+And he took off his mask.
+
+The Grand Master started back, his eyes sparkling with anger.
+
+"M. de Tavannes?" he cried, and for a moment he was silent in sheer
+astonishment.  Then, striking his hand on the table, "What means this
+trickery?" he asked.
+
+"It is of the simplest," Tavannes answered coolly.  "And yet, as you just
+now said, I had hardly come at you without it.  And I had to come at you.
+No, M. de Biron," he added quickly, as Biron in a rage laid his hand on a
+bell which stood beside him on the table, "you cannot that way undo what
+is done."
+
+"I can at least deliver you," the Grand Master answered, in heat, "to
+those who will deal with you as you have dealt with us and ours."
+
+"It will avail you nothing," Count Hannibal replied soberly.  "For see
+here, Grand Master, I come from the King.  If you are at war with him,
+and hold his fortress in his teeth, I am his ambassador and sacrosanct.
+If you are at peace with him and hold it at his will, I am his servant,
+and safe also."
+
+"At peace and safe?" Biron cried, his voice trembling with indignation.
+"And are those safe or at peace who came here trusting to _his_ word, who
+lay in his palace and slept in his beds?  Where are they, and how have
+they fared, that you dare appeal to the law of nations, or he to the
+loyalty of Biron?  And for you to beard me, whose brother to-day hounded
+the dogs of this vile city on the noblest in France, who have leagued
+yourself with a crew of foreigners to do a deed which will make our
+country stink in the nostrils of the world when we are dust!  You, to
+come here and talk of peace and safety!  M. de Tavannes"--and he struck
+his hand on the table--"you are a bold man.  I know why the King had a
+will to send you, but I know not why you had the will to come."
+
+"That I will tell you later," Count Hannibal answered coolly.  "For the
+King, first.  My message is brief, M. de Biron.  Have you a mind to hold
+the scales in France?"
+
+"Between?" Biron asked contemptuously.
+
+"Between the Lorrainers and the Huguenots."
+
+The Grand Master scowled fiercely.  "I have played the go-between once
+too often," he growled.
+
+"It is no question of going between, it is a question of holding
+between," Tavannes answered coolly.  "It is a question--but, in a word,
+have you a mind, M. de Biron, to be Governor of Rochelle?  The King,
+having dealt the blow that has been struck to-day, looks to follow up
+severity, as a wise ruler should, with indulgence.  And to quiet the
+minds of the Rochellois he would set over them a ruler at once acceptable
+to them--or war must come of it--and faithful to his Majesty.  Such a
+man, M. de Biron, will in such a post be Master of the Kingdom; for he
+will hold the doors of Janus, and as he bridles his sea-dogs, or unchains
+them, there will be peace or war in France."
+
+"Is all that from the King's mouth?" Biron asked with sarcasm.  But his
+passion had died down.  He was grown thoughtful, suspicious; he eyed the
+other intently as if he would read his heart.
+
+"The offer is his, and the reflections are mine," Tavannes answered
+dryly.  "Let me add one more.  The Admiral is dead.  The King of Navarre
+and the Prince of Conde are prisoners.  Who is now to balance the
+Italians and the Guises?  The Grand Master--if he be wise and content to
+give the law to France from the citadel of Rochelle."
+
+Biron stared at the speaker in astonishment at his frankness.
+
+"You are a bold man," he cried at last.  "But _timeo Danaos et dona
+ferentes_," he continued bitterly.  "You offer, sir, too much."
+
+"The offer is the King's."
+
+"And the conditions?  The price?"
+
+"That you remain quiet, M. de Biron."
+
+"In the Arsenal?"
+
+"In the Arsenal.  And do not too openly counteract the King's will.  That
+is all."
+
+The Grand Master looked puzzled.  "I will give up no one," he said.  "No
+one!  Let that be understood."
+
+"The King requires no one."
+
+A pause.  Then, "Does M. de Guise know of the offer?" Biron inquired; and
+his eye grew bright.  He hated the Guises and was hated by them.  It was
+_there_ he was a Huguenot.
+
+"He has gone far to-day," Count Hannibal answered dryly.  "And if no
+worse come of it should be content.  Madame Catherine knows of it."
+
+The Grand Master was aware that Marshal Tavannes depended on the Queen-
+mother; and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Ay, 'tis like her policy," he muttered.  "'Tis like her!"  And pointing
+his guest to a cushioned chest which stood against the wall, he sat down
+in a chair beside the table and thought awhile, his brow wrinkled, his
+eyes dreaming.  By-and-by he laughed sourly.  "You have lighted the
+fire," he said, "and would fain I put it out."
+
+"We would have you hinder it spreading."
+
+"You have done the deed and are loth to pay the blood-money.  That is it,
+is it?
+
+"We prefer to pay it to M. de Biron," Count Hannibal answered civilly.
+
+Again the Grand Master was silent awhile.  At length he looked up and
+fixed Tavannes with eyes keen as steel.
+
+"What is behind?" he growled.  "Say, man, what is it?  What is behind?"
+
+"If there be aught behind, I do not know it," Tavannes answered
+steadfastly.
+
+M. de Biron relaxed the fixity of his gaze.  "But you said that you had
+an object?" he returned.
+
+"I had--in being the bearer of the message."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"My object?  To learn two things."
+
+"The first, if it please you?"  The Grand Master's chin stuck out a
+little, as he spoke.
+
+"Have you in the Arsenal a M. de Tignonville, a gentleman of Poitou?"
+
+"I have not," Biron answered curtly.  "The second?"
+
+"Have you here a Huguenot minister?"
+
+"I have not.  And if I had I should not give him up," he added firmly.
+
+Tavannes shrugged his shoulders.  "I have a use for one," he said
+carelessly.  "But it need not harm him."
+
+"For what, then, do you need him?"
+
+"To marry me."
+
+The other stared.  "But you are a Catholic," he said.
+
+"But she is a Huguenot," Tavannes answered.
+
+The Grand Master did not attempt to hide his astonishment.
+
+"And she sticks on that?" he exclaimed.  "To-day?"
+
+"She sticks on that.  To-day."
+
+"To-day?  _Nom de Dieu_!  To-day!  Well," brushing the matter aside after
+a pause of bewilderment, "any way, I cannot help her.  I have no minister
+here.  If there be aught else I can do for her--"
+
+"Nothing, I thank you," Tavannes answered.  "Then it only remains for me
+to take your answer to the King?"  And he rose politely, and taking his
+mask from the table prepared to assume it.
+
+M. de Biron gazed at him a moment without speaking, as if he pondered on
+the answer he should give.  At length he nodded, and rang the bell which
+stood beside him.
+
+"The mask!" he muttered in a low voice as footsteps sounded without.  And,
+obedient to the hint, Tavannes disguised himself.  A second later the
+officer who had introduced him opened the door and entered.
+
+"Peridol," M. de Biron said--he had risen to his feet--"I have received a
+message which needs confirmation; and to obtain this I must leave the
+Arsenal.  I am going to the house--you will remember this--of Marshal
+Tavannes, who will be responsible for my person; in the mean time this
+gentleman will remain under strict guard in the south chamber upstairs.
+You will treat him as a hostage, with all respect, and will allow him to
+preserve his _incognito_.  But if I do not return by noon to-morrow, you
+will deliver him to the men below, who will know how to deal with him."
+
+Count Hannibal made no attempt to interrupt him, nor did he betray the
+discomfiture which he undoubtedly felt.  But as the Grand Master paused--
+
+"M. de Biron," he said, in a voice harsh and low, "you will answer to me
+for this!"  And his eyes glittered through the slits in the mask.
+
+"Possibly, but not to-day or to-morrow!" Biron replied, shrugging his
+shoulders contemptuously.  "Peridol! see the gentleman bestowed as I have
+ordered, and then return to me.  Monsieur," with a bow, half courteous,
+half ironical, "let me commend to you the advantages of silence and your
+mask."  And he waved his hand in the direction of the door.
+
+A moment Count Hannibal hesitated.  He was in the heart of a hostile
+fortress where the resistance of a single man armed to the teeth must
+have been futile; and he was unarmed, save for a poniard.  Nevertheless,
+for a moment the impulse to spring on Biron, and with the dagger at his
+throat to make his life the price of a safe passage, was strong.  Then--for
+with the warp of a harsh and passionate character were interwrought an
+odd shrewdness and some things little suspected--he resigned himself.
+Bowing gravely, he turned with dignity, and in silence followed the
+officer from the room.
+
+Peridol had two men in waiting at the door.  From one of these the
+lieutenant took a lanthorn, and, with an air at once sullen and
+deferential, led the way up the stone staircase to the floor over that in
+which M. de Biron had his lodging.  Tavannes followed; the two guards
+came last, carrying a second lanthorn.  At the head of the staircase,
+whence a bare passage ran, north and south, the procession turned right-
+handed, and, passing two doors, halted before the third and last, which
+faced them at the end of the passage.  The lieutenant unlocked it with a
+key which he took from a hook beside the doorpost.  Then, holding up his
+light, he invited his charge to enter.
+
+The room was not small, but it was low in the roof, and prison-like, it
+had bare walls and smoke-marks on the ceiling.  The window, set in a deep
+recess, the floor of which rose a foot above that of the room, was
+unglazed; and through the gloomy orifice the night wind blew in, laden
+even on that August evening with the dank mist of the river flats.  A
+table, two stools, and a truckle bed without straw or covering made up
+the furniture; but Peridol, after glancing round, ordered one of the men
+to fetch a truss of straw and the other to bring up a pitcher of wine.
+While they were gone Tavannes and he stood silently waiting, until,
+observing that the captive's eyes sought the window, the lieutenant
+laughed.
+
+"No bars?" he said.  "No, Monsieur, and no need of them.  You will not go
+by that road, bars or no bars."
+
+"What is below?" Count Hannibal asked carelessly.  "The river?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," with a grin; "but not water.  Mud, and six feet of it,
+soft as Christmas porridge, but not so sweet.  I've known two puppies
+thrown in under this window that did not weigh more than a fat pullet
+apiece.  One was gone before you could count fifty, and the other did not
+live thrice as long--nor would have lasted that time, but that it fell on
+the first and clung to it."
+
+Tavannes dismissed the matter with a shrug, and, drawing his cloak about
+him, set a stool against the wall and sat down.  The men who brought in
+the wine and the bundle of straw were inquisitive, and would have
+loitered, scanning him stealthily; but Peridol hurried them away.  The
+lieutenant himself stayed only to cast a glance round the room, and to
+mutter that he would return when his lord returned; then, with a "Good
+night" which said more for his manners than his good will, he followed
+them out.  A moment later the grating of the key in the lock and the
+sound of the bolts as they sped home told Tavannes that he was a
+prisoner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.  TOO SHORT A SPOON.
+
+
+Count Hannibal remained seated, his chin sunk on his breast, until his
+ear assured him that the three men had descended the stairs to the floor
+below.  Then he rose, and, taking the lanthorn from the table, on which
+Peridol had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like the
+window, stood in a recess--in this case the prolongation of the passage.
+A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and
+he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark,
+windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment.  Placing the
+lanthorn on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the
+window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded edge, looked out.
+
+He knew, rather than saw, that Peridol had told the truth.  The smell of
+the aguish flats which fringed that part of Paris rose strong in his
+nostrils.  He guessed that the sluggish arm of the Seine which divided
+the Arsenal from the Ile des Louviers crawled below; but the night was
+dark, and it was impossible to discern land from water.  He fancied that
+he could trace the outline of the island--an uninhabited place, given up
+to wood piles; but the lights of the college quarter beyond it, which
+rose feebly twinkling to the crown of St. Genevieve, confused his sight
+and rendered the nearer gloom more opaque.  From that direction and from
+the Cite to his right came sounds which told of a city still heaving in
+its blood-stained sleep, and even in its dreams planning further
+excesses.  Now a distant shot, and now a faint murmur on one of the
+bridges, or a far-off cry, raucous, sudden, curdled the blood.  But even
+of what was passing under cover of the darkness, he could learn little;
+and after standing awhile with a hand on either side of the window he
+found the night air chill.  He stepped back, and, descending to the
+floor, uncovered the lanthorn and set it on the table.  His thoughts
+travelled back to the preparations he had made the night before with a
+view to securing Mademoiselle's person, and he considered, with a grim
+smile, how little he had foreseen that within twenty-four hours he would
+himself be a prisoner.  Presently, finding his mask oppressive, he
+removed it, and, laying it on the table before him, sat scowling at the
+light.
+
+Biron had jockeyed him cleverly.  Well, the worse for Armand de Gontaut
+de Biron if after this adventure the luck went against him!  But in the
+mean time?  In the mean time his fate was sealed if harm befell Biron.
+And what the King's real mind in Biron's case was, and what the Queen-
+Mother's, he could not say; just as it was impossible to predict how far,
+when they had the Grand Master at their mercy, they would resist the
+temptation to add him to the victims.  If Biron placed himself at once in
+Marshal Tavannes' hands, all might be well.  But if he ventured within
+the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the Louvre, the fact that
+with the Grand Master's fate Count Hannibal's was bound up, would not
+weigh a straw.  In such crises the great sacrificed the less great, the
+less great the small, without a scruple.  And the Guises did not love
+Count Hannibal; he was not loved by many.  Even the strength of his
+brother the Marshal stood rather in the favour of the King's heir, for
+whom he had won the battle of Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in
+ordinary times, might snap in the clash of forces and interests which the
+desperate madness of this day had let loose on Paris.
+
+It was not the peril in which he stood, however--though, with the cold
+clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a
+nicety--that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced
+inactivity.  He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm,
+and out of the danger of others to compact his own success.  Instead he
+lay here, not only powerless to guide his destiny, which hung on the
+discretion of another, but unable to stretch forth a finger to further
+his plans.
+
+As he sat looking darkly at the lanthorn, his mind followed Biron and his
+riders through the midnight streets along St. Antoine and La Verrerie,
+through the gloomy narrows of the Rue la Ferronerie, and so past the
+house in the Rue St. Honore where Mademoiselle sat awaiting the
+morrow--sat awaiting Tignonville, the minister, the marriage!  Doubtless
+there were still bands of plunderers roaming to and fro; at the barriers
+troops of archers stopping the suspected; at the windows pale faces
+gazing down; at the gates of the Temple, and of the walled enclosures
+which largely made up the city, strong guards set to prevent invasion.
+Biron would go with sufficient to secure himself; and unless he
+encountered the bodyguard of Guise his passage would quiet the town.  But
+was it so certain that _she_ was safe?  He knew his men, and while he had
+been free he had not hesitated to leave her in their care.  But now that
+he could not go, now that he could not raise a hand to help, the
+confidence which had not failed him in straits more dangerous grew weak.
+He pictured the things which might happen, at which, in his normal frame
+of mind, he would have laughed.  Now they troubled him so that he started
+at a shadow, so that he quailed at a thought.  He, who last night, when
+free to act, had timed his coming and her rescue to a minute!  Who had
+rejoiced in the peril, since with the glamour of such things foolish
+women were taken!  Who had not flinched when the crowd roared most
+fiercely for her blood!
+
+Why had he suffered himself to be trapped?  Why indeed?  And thrice in
+passion he paced the room.  Long ago the famous Nostradamus had told him
+that he would live to be a king, but of the smallest kingdom in the
+world.  "Every man is a king in his coffin," he had answered.  "The grave
+is cold and your kingdom shall be warm," the wizard had rejoined.  On
+which the courtiers had laughed, promising him a Moorish island and a
+black queen.  And he had gibed with the rest, but secretly had taken note
+of the sovereign counties of France, their rulers and their heirs.  Now
+he held the thought in horror, foreseeing no county, but the cage under
+the stifling tiles at Loches, in which Cardinal Balue and many another
+had worn out their hearts.
+
+He came to that thought not by way of his own peril, but of
+Mademoiselle's; which affected him in so novel a fashion that he wondered
+at his folly.  At last, tired of watching the shadows which the draught
+set dancing on the wall, he drew his cloak about him and lay down on the
+straw.  He had kept vigil the previous night, and in a few minutes, with
+a campaigner's ease, he was asleep.
+
+Midnight had struck.  About two the light in the lanthorn burned low in
+the socket, and with a soft sputtering went out.  For an hour after that
+the room lay still, silent, dark; then slowly the grey dawn, the greyer
+for the river mist which wrapped the neighbourhood in a clammy shroud,
+began to creep into the room and discover the vague shapes of things.
+Again an hour passed, and the sun was rising above Montreuil, and here
+and there the river began to shimmer through the fog.  But in the room it
+was barely daylight when the sleeper awoke, and sat up, his face
+expectant.  Something had roused him.  He listened.
+
+His ear, and the habit of vigilance which a life of danger instils, had
+not deceived him.  There were men moving in the passage; men who shuffled
+their feet impatiently.  Had Biron returned?  Or had aught happened to
+him, and were these men come to avenge him?  Count Hannibal rose and
+stole across the boards to the door, and, setting his ear to it,
+listened.
+
+He listened while a man might count a hundred and fifty, counting slowly.
+Then, for the third part of a second, he turned his head, and his eyes
+travelled the room.  He stooped again and listened more closely, scarcely
+breathing.  There were voices as well as feet to be heard now; one
+voice--he thought it was Peridol's--which held on long, now low, now
+rising into violence.  Others were audible at intervals, but only in a
+growl or a bitter exclamation, that told of minds made up and hands which
+would not be restrained.  He caught his own name, _Tavannes_--the mask
+was useless, then!  And once a noisy movement which came to nothing,
+foiled, he fancied, by Peridol.
+
+He knew enough.  He rose to his full height, and his eyes seemed a little
+closer together; an ugly smile curved his lips.  His gaze travelled over
+the objects in the room, the bare stools and table, the lanthorn, the
+wine-pitcher; beyond these, in a corner, the cloak and straw on the low
+bed.  The light, cold and grey, fell cheerlessly on the dull chamber, and
+showed it in harmony with the ominous whisper which grew in the gallery;
+with the stern-faced listener who stood, his one hand on the door.  He
+looked, but he found nothing to his purpose, nothing to serve his end,
+whatever his end was; and with a quick light step he left the door,
+mounted the window recess, and, poised on the very edge, looked down.
+
+If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate.  The depth to
+the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet.  But Peridol had told
+the truth.  Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime,
+here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a
+tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow
+stream beyond.  This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall
+below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or
+fastenings.  But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of
+the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position.
+
+He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with guarded
+movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent room, and at
+any moment the rush might be made, the door burst in--he set the lanthorn
+and wine-pitcher on the floor, and took up the table in his arms.  He
+began to carry it to the window, but, halfway thither, his eye told him
+that it would not pass through the opening, and he set it down again and
+glided to the bed.  Again he was thwarted; the bed was screwed to the
+floor.  Another might have despaired at that, but he rose with no sign of
+dismay, and listening, always listening, he spread his cloak on the
+floor, and deftly, with as little noise and rustling as might be, be
+piled the straw in it, compressed the bundle, and, cutting the bed-cords
+with his dagger, bound all together with them.  In three steps he was in
+the embrasure of the window, and, even as the men in the passage thrust
+the lieutenant aside and with a sudden uproar came down to the door, he
+flung the bundle lightly and carefully to the right--so lightly and
+carefully, and with so nice and deliberate a calculation, that it seemed
+odd it fell beyond the reach of an ordinary leap.
+
+An instant and he was on the floor again.  The men had to unlock, to draw
+back the bolts, to draw back the door which opened outwards; their
+numbers, as well as their savage haste, impeded them.  When they burst in
+at last, with a roar of "To the river!  To the river!"--burst in a rush
+of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him standing, a
+solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his arms folded.  And
+the sight of the passive figure for a moment stayed them.
+
+"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his weapon.
+"We give you one minute!"
+
+"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in.  "Be ready!"
+
+"You would murder me?" he said with dignity.  And when they shouted
+assent, "Good!" he answered.  "It is between you and M. de Biron, whose
+guest I am.  But"--with a glance which passed round the ring of glaring
+eyes and working features--"I would leave a last word for some one.  Is
+there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King?  'Tis for two
+men coming and going for a fortnight."  And he held up a slip of paper.
+
+The leader cried, "To hell with his safe-conduct!  Say your prayers!"
+
+But all were not of his mind.  On one or two of the savage faces--the
+faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their wrongs--flashed
+an avaricious gleam.  A safe-conduct?  To avenge, to slay, to kill--and
+to go safe!  For some minds such a thing has an invincible fascination.  A
+man thrust himself forward.
+
+"Ay, I'll have it!" he cried.  "Give it here!"
+
+"It is yours," Count Hannibal answered, "if you will carry ten words to
+Marshal Tavannes--when I am gone."
+
+The man's neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
+
+"And Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely," he said.
+
+But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand.
+
+"If I take the message!" he muttered in a grim aside.  "Do you think me
+mad?"  And then aloud he cried, "Ay, I'll take your message!  Give me the
+paper."
+
+"You swear you will take it?"
+
+The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and went
+forward.  The others would have pressed round too, half in envy, half in
+scorn; but Tavannes by a gesture stayed them.
+
+"Gentlemen, I ask a minute only," he said.  "A minute for a dying man is
+not much.  Your friends had as much."
+
+And the fellows, acknowledging the claim and assured that their victim
+could not escape, let Maudron go round the table to him.
+
+The man was in haste and ill at ease, conscious of his evil intentions
+and the fraud he was practising; and at once greedy to have, yet ashamed
+of the bargain he was making.  His attention was divided between the slip
+of paper, on which his eyes fixed themselves, and the attitude of his
+comrades; he paid little heed to Count Hannibal, whom he knew to be
+unarmed.  Only when Tavannes seemed to ponder on his message, and to be
+fain to delay, "Go on," he muttered with brutal frankness; "your time is
+up!"
+
+Tavannes started, the paper slipped from his fingers.  Maudron saw a
+chance of getting it without committing himself, and quick as the thought
+leapt up in his mind he stooped, and grasped the paper, and would have
+leapt back with it!  But quick as he, and quicker, Tavannes too stooped,
+gripped him by the waist, and with a prodigious effort, and a yell in
+which all the man's stormy nature, restrained to a part during the last
+few minutes, broke forth, he flung the ill-fated wretch head first
+through the window.
+
+The movement carried Tavannes himself--even while his victim's scream
+rang through the chamber--into the embrasure.  An instant he hung on the
+verge; then, as the men, a moment thunderstruck, sprang forward to avenge
+their comrade, he leapt out, jumping for the struggling body that had
+struck the mud, and now lay in it face downwards.
+
+He alighted on it, and drove it deep into the quaking slime; but he
+himself bounded off right-handed.  The peril was appalling, the
+possibility untried, the chance one which only a doomed man would have
+taken.  But he reached the straw-bale, and it gave him a momentary, a
+precarious footing.  He could not regain his balance, he could not even
+for an instant stand upright on it.  But from its support he leapt on
+convulsively, and, as a pike, flung from above, wounded him in the
+shoulder, he fell his length in the slough--but forward, with his
+outstretched hands resting on soil of a harder nature.  They sank, it is
+true, to the elbow, but he dragged his body forward on them, and forward,
+and freeing one by a last effort of strength--he could not free both,
+and, as it was, half his face was submerged--he reached out another yard,
+and gripped a balk of wood, which projected from the corner of the
+building for the purpose of fending off the stream in flood-time.
+
+The men at the window shrieked with rage as he slowly drew himself from
+the slough, and stood from head to foot a pillar of mud.  Shout as they
+might, they had no firearms, and, crowded together in the narrow
+embrasure, they could take no aim with their pikes.  They could only look
+on in furious impotence, flinging curses at him until he passed from
+their view, behind the angle of the building.
+
+Here for a score of yards a strip of hard foreshore ran between mud and
+wall.  He struggled along it until he reached the end of the wall; then
+with a shuddering glance at the black heaving pit from which he had
+escaped, and which yet gurgled above the body of the hapless Maudron--a
+tribute to horror which even his fierce nature could not withhold--he
+turned and painfully climbed the river-bank.  The pike-wound in his
+shoulder was slight, but the effort had been supreme; the sweat poured
+from his brow, his visage was grey and drawn.  Nevertheless, when he had
+put fifty paces between himself and the buildings of the Arsenal he
+paused, and turned.  He saw that the men had run to other windows which
+looked that way; and his face lightened and his form dilated with
+triumph.
+
+He shook his fist at them.  "Ho, fools!" he cried, "you kill not Tavannes
+so!  Till our next meeting at Montfaucon, fare you well!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.  THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE.
+
+
+As the exertion of power is for the most part pleasing, so the exercise
+of that which a woman possesses over a man is especially pleasant.  When
+in addition a risk of no ordinary kind has been run, and the happy issue
+has been barely expected--above all when the momentary gain seems an
+augury of final victory--it is impossible that a feeling akin to
+exultation should not arise in the mind, however black the horizon, and
+however distant the fair haven.
+
+The situation in which Count Hannibal left Mademoiselle de Vrillac will
+be remembered.  She had prevailed over him; but in return he had bowed
+her to the earth, partly by subtle threats, and partly by sheer savagery.
+He had left her weeping, with the words "Madame de Tavannes" ringing doom
+in her ears, and the dark phantom of his will pointing onward to an
+inevitable future.  Had she abandoned hope, it would have been natural.
+
+But the girl was of a spirit not long nor easily cowed; and Tavannes had
+not left her half an hour before the reflection, that so far the honours
+of the day were hers, rose up to console her.  In spite of his power and
+her impotence, she had imposed her will upon his; she had established an
+influence over him, she had discovered a scruple which stayed him, and a
+limit beyond which he would not pass.  In the result she might escape;
+for the conditions which he had accepted with an ill grace might prove
+beyond his fulfilling.  She might escape!  True, many in her place would
+have feared a worse fate and harsher handling.  But there lay half the
+merit of her victory.  It had left her not only in a better position, but
+with a new confidence in her power over her adversary.  He would insist
+on the bargain struck between them; within its four corners she could
+look for no indulgence.  But if the conditions proved to be beyond his
+power, she believed that he would spare her: with an ill grace, indeed,
+with such ferocity and coarse reviling as her woman's pride might
+scarcely support.  But he would spare her.
+
+And if the worst befell her?  She would still have the consolation of
+knowing that from the cataclysm which had overwhelmed her friends she had
+ransomed those most dear to her.  Owing to the position of her chamber,
+she saw nothing of the excesses to which Paris gave itself up during the
+remainder of that day, and to which it returned with unabated zest on the
+following morning.  But the Carlats and her women learned from the guards
+below what was passing; and quaking and cowering in their corners fixed
+frightened eyes on her, who was their stay and hope.  How could she prove
+false to them?  How doom them to perish, had there been no question of
+her lover?
+
+Of him she sat thinking by the hour together.  She recalled with solemn
+tenderness the moment in which he had devoted himself to the death which
+came but halfway to seize them; nor was she slow to forgive his
+subsequent withdrawal, and his attempt to rescue her in spite of herself.
+She found the impulse to die glorious; the withdrawal--for the actor was
+her lover--a thing done for her, which he would not have done for
+himself, and which she quickly forgave him.  The revulsion of feeling
+which had conquered her at the time, and led her to tear herself from
+him, no longer moved her much while all in his action that might have
+seemed in other eyes less than heroic, all in his conduct--in a crisis
+demanding the highest--that smacked of common or mean, vanished, for she
+still clung to him.  Clung to him, not so much with the passion of the
+mature woman, as with the maiden and sentimental affection of one who has
+now no hope of possessing, and for whom love no longer spells life, but
+sacrifice.
+
+She had leisure for these musings, for she was left to herself all that
+day, and until late on the following day.  Her own servants waited on
+her, and it was known that below stairs Count Hannibal's riders kept
+sullen ward behind barred doors and shuttered windows, refusing admission
+to all who came.  Now and again echoes of the riot which filled the
+streets with bloodshed reached her ears: or word of the more striking
+occurrences was brought to her by Madame Carlat.  And early on this
+second day, Monday, it was whispered that M. de Tavannes had not
+returned, and that the men below were growing uneasy.
+
+At last, when the suspense below and above was growing tense, it was
+broken.  Footsteps and voices were heard ascending the stairs, the
+trampling and hubbub were followed by a heavy knock; perforce the door
+was opened.  While Mademoiselle, who had risen, awaited with a beating
+heart she knew not what, a cowled father, in the dress of the monks of
+St. Magloire, stood on the threshold, and, crossing himself, muttered the
+words of benediction.  He entered slowly.
+
+No sight could have been more dreadful to Mademoiselle; for it set at
+naught the conditions which she had so hardly exacted.  What if Count
+Hannibal were behind, were even now mounting the stairs, prepared to
+force her to a marriage before this shaveling?  Or ready to proceed, if
+she refused, to the last extremity?  Sudden terror taking her by the
+throat choked her; her colour fled, her hand flew to her breast.  Yet,
+before the door had closed on Bigot, she had recovered herself.
+
+"This intrusion is not by M. de Tavannes' orders!" she cried, stepping
+forward haughtily.  "This person has no business here.  How dare you
+admit him?"
+
+The Norman showed his bearded visage a moment at the door.
+
+"My lord's orders," he muttered sullenly.  And he closed the door on
+them.
+
+She had a Huguenot's hatred of a cowl; and, in this crisis, her reasons
+for fearing it.  Her eyes blazed with indignation.
+
+"Enough!" she cried, pointing, with a gesture of dismissal, to the door.
+"Go back to him who sent you!  If he will insult me, let him do it to my
+face!  If he will perjure himself, let him forswear himself in person.
+Or, if you come on your own account," she continued, flinging prudence to
+the winds, "as your brethren came to Philippa de Luns, to offer me the
+choice you offered her, I give you her answer!  If I had thought of
+myself only, I had not lived so long!  And rather than bear your presence
+or hear your arguments--"
+
+She came to a sudden, odd, quavering pause on the word; her lips remained
+parted, she swayed an instant on her feet.  The next moment Madame
+Carlat, to whom the visitor had turned his shoulder, doubted her eyes,
+for Mademoiselle was in the monk's arms!
+
+"Clotilde!  Clotilde!" he cried, and held her to him.
+
+For the monk was M. de Tignonville!  Under the cowl was the lover with
+whom Mademoiselle's thoughts had been engaged.  In this disguise, and
+armed with Tavannes' note to Madame St. Lo--which the guards below knew
+for Count Hannibal's hand, though they were unable to decipher the
+contents--he had found no difficulty in making his way to her.
+
+He had learned before he entered that Tavannes was abroad, and was aware,
+therefore, that he ran little risk.  But his betrothed, who knew nothing
+of his adventures in the interval, saw in him one who came to her at the
+greatest risk, across unnumbered perils, through streets swimming with
+blood.  And though she had never embraced him save in the crisis of the
+massacre, though she had never called him by his Christian name, in the
+joy of this meeting she abandoned herself to him, she clung to him
+weeping, she forgot for the time his defection, and thought only of him
+who had returned to her so gallantly, who brought into the room a breath
+of Poitou, and the sea, and the old days, and the old life; and at the
+sight of whom the horrors of the last two days fell from her--for the
+moment.
+
+And Madame Carlat wept also, and in the room was a sound of weeping.  The
+least moved was, for a certainty, M. de Tignonville himself, who, as we
+know, had gone through much that day.  But even his heart swelled, partly
+with pride, partly with thankfulness that he had returned to one who
+loved him so well.  Fate had been kinder to him than he deserved; but he
+need not confess that now.  When he had brought off the _coup_ which he
+had in his mind, he would hasten to forget that he had entertained other
+ideas.
+
+Mademoiselle had been the first to be carried away; she was also the
+first to recover herself.
+
+"I had forgotten," she cried suddenly, "I had forgotten," and she wrested
+herself from his embrace with violence, and stood panting, her face
+white, her eyes affrighted.  "I must not!  And you--I had forgotten that
+too!  To be here, Monsieur, is the worst office you can do me.  You must
+go!  Go, Monsieur, in mercy I beg of you, while it is possible.  Every
+moment you are here, every moment you spend in this house, I shudder."
+
+"You need not fear for me," he said, in a tone of bravado.  He did not
+understand.
+
+"I fear for myself!" she answered.  And then, wringing her hands, divided
+between her love for him and her fear for herself, "Oh, forgive me!" she
+said.  "You do not know that he has promised to spare me, if he cannot
+produce you, and--and--a minister?  He has granted me that; but I thought
+when you entered that he had gone back on his word, and sent a priest,
+and it maddened me!  I could not bear to think that I had gained nothing.
+Now you understand, and you will pardon me, Monsieur?  If he cannot
+produce you I am saved.  Go then, leave me, I beg, without a moment's
+delay."
+
+He laughed derisively as he turned back his cowl and squared his
+shoulders.
+
+"All that is over!" he said, "over and done with, sweet!  M. de Tavannes
+is at this moment a prisoner in the Arsenal.  On my way hither I fell in
+with M. de Biron, and he told me.  The Grand Master, who would have had
+me join his company, had been all night at Marshal Tavannes' hotel, where
+he had been detained longer than he expected.  He stood pledged to
+release Count Hannibal on his return, but at my request he consented to
+hold him one hour, and to do also a little thing for me."
+
+The glow of hope which had transfigured her face faded slowly.
+
+"It will not help," she said, "if he find you here."
+
+"He will not!  Nor you!"
+
+"How, Monsieur?"
+
+"In a few minutes," he explained--he could not hide his exultation, "a
+message will come from the Arsenal in the name of Tavannes, bidding the
+monk he sent to you bring you to him.  A spoken message, corroborated by
+my presence, should suffice: '_Bid the monk who is now with
+Mademoiselle_,' it will run, '_bring her to me at the Arsenal, and let
+four pikes guard them hither_.'  When I begged M. de Biron to do this, he
+laughed.  'I can do better,' he said.  'They shall bring one of Count
+Hannibal's gloves, which he left on my table.  Always supposing my
+rascals have done him no harm, which God forbid, for I am answerable.'"
+
+Tignonville, delighted with the stratagem which the meeting with Biron
+had suggested, could see no flaw in it.  She could, and though she heard
+him to the end, no second glow of hope softened the lines of her
+features.  With a gesture full of dignity, which took in not only Madame
+Carlat and the waiting-woman who stood at the door, but the absent
+servants--
+
+"And what of these?" she said.  "What of these?  You forget them,
+Monsieur.  You do not think, you cannot have thought, that I would
+abandon them?  That I would leave them to such mercy as he, defeated,
+might extend to them?  No, you forgot them."
+
+He did not know what to answer, for the jealous eyes of the frightened
+waiting-woman, fierce with the fierceness of a hunted animal, were on
+him.  The Carlat and she had heard, could hear.  At last--
+
+"Better one than none!" he muttered, in a voice so low that if the
+servants caught his meaning it was but indistinctly.  "I have to think of
+you."
+
+"And I of them," she answered firmly.  "Nor is that all.  Were they not
+here, it could not be.  My word is passed--though a moment ago, Monsieur,
+in the joy of seeing you I forgot it.  And how," she continued, "if I
+keep not my word, can I expect him to keep his?  Or how, if I am ready to
+break the bond, on this happening which I never expected, can I hold him
+to conditions which he loves as little--as little as I love him?"
+
+Her voice dropped piteously on the last words; her eyes, craving her
+lover's pardon, sought his.  But rage, not pity or admiration, was the
+feeling roused in Tignonville's breast.  He stood staring at her, struck
+dumb by folly so immense.  At last--
+
+"You cannot mean this," he blurted out.  "You cannot mean, Mademoiselle,
+that you intend to stand on that!  To keep a promise wrung from you by
+force, by treachery, in the midst of such horrors as he and his have
+brought upon us!  It is inconceivable!"
+
+She shook her head.  "I promised," she said.
+
+"You were forced to it."
+
+"But the promise saved our lives."
+
+"From murderers!  From assassins!" he protested.
+
+She shook her head.  "I cannot go back," she said firmly; "I cannot."
+
+"Then you are willing to marry him," he cried in ignoble anger.  "That is
+it!  Nay, you must wish to marry him!  For, as for his conditions,
+Mademoiselle," the young man continued, with an insulting laugh, "you
+cannot think seriously of them.  _He_ keep conditions and you in his
+power!  He, Count Hannibal!  But for the matter of that, and were he in
+the mind to keep them, what are they?  There are plenty of ministers.  I
+left one only this morning.  I could lay my hand on one in five minutes.
+He has only to find one, therefore--and to find me!"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," she cried, trembling with wounded pride, "it is for that
+reason I implore you to go.  The sooner you leave me, the sooner you
+place yourself in a position of security, the happier for me!  Every
+moment that you spend here, you endanger both yourself and me!"
+
+"If you will not be persuaded--"
+
+"I shall not be persuaded," she answered firmly, "and you do but"--alas!
+her pride began to break down, her voice to quiver, she looked piteously
+at him--"by staying here make it harder for me to--to--"
+
+"Hush!" cried Madame Carlat.  "Hush!"  And as they started and turned
+towards her--she was at the end of the chamber by the door, almost out of
+earshot--she raised a warning hand.  "Listen!" she muttered, "some one
+has entered the house."
+
+"'Tis my messenger from Biron," Tignonville answered sullenly.  And he
+drew his cowl over his face, and, hiding his hands in his sleeves, moved
+towards the door.  But on the threshold he turned and held out his arms.
+He could not go thus.  "Mademoiselle!  Clotilde!" he cried with passion,
+"for the last time, listen to me, come with me.  Be persuaded!"
+
+"Hush!" Madame Carlat interposed again, and turned a scared face on them.
+"It is no messenger!  It is Tavannes himself: I know his voice."  And she
+wrung her hands.  "_Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu_, what are we to do?" she
+continued, panic-stricken.  And she looked all ways about the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.  AT CLOSE QUARTERS.
+
+
+Fear leapt into Mademoiselle's eyes, but she commanded herself.  She
+signed to Madame Carlat to be silent, and they listened, gazing at one
+another, hoping against hope that the woman was mistaken.  A long moment
+they waited, and some were beginning to breathe again, when the strident
+tones of Count Hannibal's voice rolled up the staircase, and put an end
+to doubt.  Mademoiselle grasped the table and stood supporting herself by
+it.
+
+"What are we to do?" she muttered.  "What are we to do?" and she turned
+distractedly towards the women.  The courage which had supported her in
+her lover's absence had abandoned her now.  "If he finds him here I am
+lost!  I am lost!"
+
+"He will not know me," Tignonville muttered.  But he spoke uncertainly;
+and his gaze, shifting hither and thither, belied the boldness of his
+words.
+
+Madame Carlat's eyes flew round the room; on her for once the burden
+seemed to rest.  Alas! the room had no second door, and the windows
+looked on a courtyard guarded by Tavannes' people.  And even now Count
+Hannibal's step rang on the stair! his hand was almost on the latch.  The
+woman wrung her hands; then, a thought striking her, she darted to a
+corner where Mademoiselle's robes hung on pegs against the wall.
+
+"Here!" she cried, raising them.  "Behind these!  He may not be seen
+here!  Quick, Monsieur, quick!  Hide yourself!"
+
+It was a forlorn hope--the suggestion of one who had not thought out the
+position; and, whatever its promise, Mademoiselle's pride revolted
+against it.
+
+"No," she cried.  "Not there!" while Tignonville, who knew that the step
+was useless, since Count Hannibal must have learned that a monk had
+entered, held his ground.
+
+"You could not deny yourself?" he muttered hurriedly.
+
+"And a priest with me?" she answered; and she shook her head.
+
+There was no time for more, and even as Mademoiselle spoke Count
+Hannibal's knuckles tapped the door.  She cast a last look at her lover.
+He had turned his back on the window; the light no longer fell on his
+face.  It was possible that he might pass unrecognized, if Tavannes' stay
+was brief; at any rate, the risk must be run.  In a half stifled voice
+she bade her woman, Javette, open the door.  Count Hannibal bowed low as
+he entered; and he deceived the others.  But he did not deceive her.  He
+had not crossed the threshold before she repented that she had not acted
+on Tignonville's suggestion, and denied herself.  For what could escape
+those hard keen eyes, which swept the room, saw all, and seemed to see
+nothing--those eyes in which there dwelt even now a glint of cruel
+humour?  He might deceive others, but she who panted within his grasp, as
+the wild bird palpitates in the hand of the fowler, was not deceived!  He
+saw, he knew! although, as he bowed, and smiling, stood upright, he
+looked only at her.
+
+"I expected to be with you before this," he said courteously, "but I have
+been detained.  First, Mademoiselle, by some of your friends, who were
+reluctant to part with me; then by some of your enemies, who, finding me
+in no handsome case, took me for a Huguenot escaped from the river, and
+drove me to shifts to get clear of them.  However, now I am come, I have
+news."
+
+"News?" she muttered with dry lips.  It could hardly be good news.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, of M. de Tignonville," he answered.  "I have little
+doubt that I shall be able to produce him this evening, and so to satisfy
+one of your scruples.  And as I trust that this good father," he went on,
+turning to the ecclesiastic, and speaking with the sneer from which he
+seldom refrained, Catholic as he was, when he mentioned a priest, "has by
+this time succeeded in removing the other, and persuading you to accept
+his ministrations--"
+
+"No!" she cried impulsively.
+
+"No?" with a dubious smile, and a glance from one to the other.  "Oh, I
+had hoped better things.  But he still may?  He still may.  I am sure he
+may.  In which case, Mademoiselle, your modesty must pardon me if I plead
+urgency, and fix the hour after supper this evening for the fulfilment of
+your promise."
+
+She turned white to the lips.  "After supper?" she gasped.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, this evening.  Shall I say--at eight o'clock?"
+
+In horror of the thing which menaced her, of the thing from which only
+two hours separated her, she could find no words but those which she had
+already used.  The worst was upon her; worse than the worst could not
+befall her.
+
+"But he has not persuaded me!" she cried, clenching her hands in passion.
+"He has not persuaded me!"
+
+"Still he may, Mademoiselle."
+
+"He will not!" she cried wildly.  "He will not!"
+
+The room was going round with her.  The precipice yawned at her feet; its
+naked terrors turned her brain.  She had been pushed nearer, and nearer,
+and nearer; struggle as she might, she was on the verge.  A mist rose
+before her eyes, and though they thought she listened she understood
+nothing of what was passing.  When she came to herself, after the lapse
+of a minute, Count Hannibal was speaking.
+
+"Permit him another trial," he was saying in a tone of bland irony.  "A
+short time longer, Mademoiselle!  One more assault, father!  The weapons
+of the Church could not be better directed or to a more worthy object;
+and, successful, shall not fail of due recognition and an earthly
+reward."
+
+And while she listened, half fainting, with a humming in her ears, he was
+gone.  The door closed on him, and the three--Mademoiselle's woman had
+withdrawn when she opened to him--looked at one another.  The girl parted
+her lips to speak, but she only smiled piteously; and it was M. de
+Tignonville who broke the silence, in a tone which betrayed rather relief
+than any other feeling.
+
+"Come, all is not lost yet," he said briskly.  "If I can escape from the
+house--"
+
+"He knows you," she answered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"He knows you," Mademoiselle repeated in a tone almost apathetic.  "I
+read it in his eyes.  He knew you at once: and knew, too," she added
+bitterly, "that he had here under his hand one of the two things he
+required."
+
+"Then why did he hide his knowledge?" the young man retorted sharply.
+
+"Why?" she answered.  "To induce me to waive the other condition in the
+hope of saving you.  Oh!" she continued in a tone of bitter raillery, "he
+has the cunning of hell, of the priests!  You are no match for him,
+Monsieur.  Nor I; nor any of us.  And"--with a gesture of despair--"he
+will be my master!  He will break me to his will and to his hand!  I
+shall be his!  His, body and soul, body and soul!" she continued
+drearily, as she sank into a chair and, rocking herself to and fro,
+covered her face.  "I shall be his!  His till I die!"
+
+The man's eyes burned, and the pulse in his temples beat wildly.
+
+"But you shall not!" he exclaimed.  "I may be no match for him in
+cunning, you say well.  But I can kill him.  And I will!"  He paced up
+and down.  "I will!"
+
+"You should have done it when he was here," she answered, half in scorn,
+half in earnest.
+
+"It is not too late," he cried; and then he stopped, silenced by the
+opening door.  It was Javette who entered.  They looked at her, and
+before she spoke were on their feet.  Her face, white and eager, marking
+something besides fear, announced that she brought news.  She closed the
+door behind her, and in a moment it was told.
+
+"Monsieur can escape, if he is quick," she cried in a low tone; and they
+saw that she trembled with excitement.  "They are at supper.  But he must
+be quick!  He must be quick!"
+
+"Is not the door guarded?"
+
+"It is, but--"
+
+"And he knows!  Your mistress says that he knows that I am here."
+
+For a moment Javette looked startled.  "It is possible," she muttered.
+"But he has gone out."
+
+Madame Carlat clapped her hands.  "I heard the door close," she said,
+"three minutes ago."
+
+"And if Monsieur can reach the room in which he supped last night, the
+window that was broken is only blocked"--she swallowed once or twice in
+her excitement--"with something he can move.  And then Monsieur is in the
+street, where his cowl will protect him."
+
+"But Count Hannibal's men?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"They are eating in the lodge by the door."
+
+"Ha!  And they cannot see the other room from there?"
+
+Javette nodded.  Her tale told, she seemed to be unable to add a word.
+Mademoiselle, who knew her for a craven, wondered that she had found
+courage either to note what she had or to bring the news.  But as
+Providence had been so good to them as to put it into this woman's head
+to act as she had, it behoved them to use the opportunity--the last, the
+very last opportunity they might have.
+
+She turned to Tignonville.  "Oh, go!" she cried feverishly.  "Go, I beg!
+Go now, Monsieur!  The greatest kindness you can do me is to place
+yourself as quickly as possible beyond his reach."  A faint colour, the
+flush of hope, had returned to her cheeks.  Her eyes glittered.
+
+"Right, Mademoiselle!" he cried, obedient for once, "I go!  And do you be
+of good courage."
+
+He held her hand: an instant, then, moving to the door, he opened it and
+listened.  They all pressed behind him to hear.  A murmur of voices, low
+and distant, mounted the staircase and bore out the girl's tale; apart
+from this the house was silent.  Tignonville cast a last look at
+Mademoiselle, and, with a gesture of farewell, glided a-tiptoe to the
+stairs and began to descend, his face hidden in his cowl.  They watched
+him reach the angle of the staircase, they watched him vanish beyond it;
+and still they listened, looking at one another when a board creaked or
+the voices below were hushed for a moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.  THE DUEL.
+
+
+At the foot of the staircase Tignonville paused.  The droning Norman
+voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before
+him on the left.  He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which
+attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew that
+at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him.  Fortunately
+the door of the room with the shattered window was almost within reach of
+his hand on the right side of the passage, and he stepped softly to it.
+He stood an instant hesitating, his hand on the latch; then, alarmed by a
+movement in the guard-room, as if some were rising, he pushed the door in
+a panic, slid into the room, and shut the door behind him.  He was safe,
+and he had made no noise; but at the table, at supper, with his back to
+him and his face to the partly closed window, sat Count Hannibal!
+
+The young man's heart stood still.  For a long minute he gazed at the
+Count's back, spellbound and unable to stir.  Then, as Tavannes ate on
+without looking round, he began to take courage.  Possibly he had entered
+so quietly that he had not been heard, or possibly his entrance was taken
+for that of a servant.  In either case, there was a chance that he might
+retire after the same fashion; and he had actually raised the latch, and
+was drawing the door to him with infinite precaution, when Tavannes'
+voice struck him, as it were, in the face.
+
+"Pray do not admit the draught, M. de Tignonville," he said, without
+looking round.  "In your cowl you do not feel it, but it is otherwise
+with me."
+
+The unfortunate Tignonville stood transfixed, glaring at the back of the
+other's head.  For an instant he could not find his voice.  At last--
+
+"Curse you!" he hissed in a transport of rage.  "Curse you!  You did
+know, then?  And she was right."
+
+"If you mean that I expected you, to be sure, Monsieur," Count Hannibal
+answered.  "See, your place is laid.  You will not feel the air from
+without there.  The very becoming dress which you have adopted secures
+you from cold.  But--do you not find it somewhat oppressive this summer
+weather?"
+
+"Curse you!" the young man cried, trembling.
+
+Tavannes turned and looked at him with a dark smile.  "The curse may
+fall," he said, "but I fancy it will not be in consequence of your
+petitions, Monsieur.  And now, were it not better you played the man?"
+
+"If I were armed," the other cried passionately, "you would not insult
+me!"
+
+"Sit down, sir, sit down," Count Hannibal answered sternly.  "We will
+talk of that presently.  In the mean time I have something to say to you.
+Will you not eat?"
+
+But Tignonville would not.
+
+"Very well," Count Hannibal answered; and he went on with his supper.  "I
+am indifferent whether you eat or not.  It is enough for me that you are
+one of the two things I lacked an hour ago; and that I have you, M. de
+Tignonville.  And through you I look to obtain the other."
+
+"What other?" Tignonville cried.
+
+"A minister," Tavannes answered, smiling.  "A minister.  There are not
+many left in Paris--of your faith.  But you met one this morning, I
+know."
+
+"I?  I met one?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, you!  And can lay your hand on him in five minutes, you
+know."
+
+M. de Tignonville gasped.  His face turned a shade paler.
+
+"You have a spy," he cried.  "You have a spy upstairs!"
+
+Tavannes raised his cup to his lips, and drank.  When he had set it down--
+
+"It may be," he said, and he shrugged his shoulders.  "I know, it boots
+not how I know.  It is my business to make the most of my knowledge--and
+of yours!"
+
+M. de Tignonville laughed rudely.  "Make the most of your own," he said;
+"you will have none of mine."
+
+"That remains to be seen," Count Hannibal answered.  "Carry your mind
+back two days, M. de Tignonville.  Had I gone to Mademoiselle de Vrillac
+last Saturday and said to her 'Marry me, or promise to marry me,' what
+answer would she have given?"
+
+"She would have called you an insolent!" the young man replied hotly.
+"And I--"
+
+"No matter what you would have done!" Tavannes said.  "Suffice it that
+she would have answered as you suggest.  Yet to-day she has given me her
+promise."
+
+"Yes," the young man retorted, "in circumstances in which no man of
+honour--"
+
+"Let us say in peculiar circumstances."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Which still exist!  Mark me, M. de Tignonville," Count Hannibal
+continued, leaning forward and eyeing the young man with meaning, "_which
+still exist_!  And may have the same effect on another's will as on hers!
+Listen!  Do you hear?"  And rising from his seat with a darkening face,
+he pointed to the partly shuttered window, through which the measured
+tramp of a body of men came heavily to the ear.  "Do you hear, Monsieur?
+Do you understand?  As it was yesterday it is to-day!  They killed the
+President La Place this morning!  And they are searching!  They are still
+searching!  The river is not yet full, nor the gibbet glutted!  I have
+but to open that window and denounce you, and your life would hang by no
+stronger thread than the life of a mad dog which they chase through the
+streets!"
+
+The younger man had risen also.  He stood confronting Tavannes, the cowl
+fallen back from his face, his eyes dilated.
+
+"You think to frighten me!" he cried.  "You think that I am craven enough
+to sacrifice her to save myself.  You--"
+
+"You were craven enough to draw back yesterday, when you stood at this
+window and waited for death!" Count Hannibal answered brutally.  "You
+flinched then, and may flinch again!"
+
+"Try me!" Tignonville retorted, trembling with passion.  "Try me!"  And
+then, as the other stared at him and made no movement, "But you dare
+not!" he cried.  "You dare not!"
+
+"No?"
+
+"No!  For if I die you lose her!" Tignonville replied in a voice of
+triumph.  "Ha, ha!  I touch you there!" he continued.  "You dare not, for
+my safety is part of the price, and is more to you than it is to myself!
+You may threaten, M. de Tavannes, you may bluster, and shout and point to
+the window"--and he mocked, with a disdainful mimicry, the other's
+gesture--"but my safety is more to you than to me!  And 'twill end
+there!"
+
+"You believe that?"
+
+"I know it!"
+
+In two strides Count Hannibal was at the window.  He seized a great piece
+of the boarding which closed one-half of the opening; he wrenched it
+away.  A flood of evening light burst in through the aperture, and fell
+on and heightened the flushed passion of his features, as he turned again
+to his opponent.
+
+"Then if you know it," he cried vehemently, "in God's name act upon it!"
+And he pointed to the window.
+
+"Act upon it?"
+
+"Ay, act upon it!" Tavannes repeated, with a glance of flame.  "The road
+is open!  If you would save your mistress, behold the way!  If you would
+save her from the embrace she abhors, from the eyes under which she
+trembles, from the hand of a master, there lies the way!  And it is not
+her glove only you will save, but herself, her soul, her body!  So," he
+continued, with a certain wildness, and in a tone wherein contempt and
+bitterness were mingled, "to the lions, brave lover!  Will you your life
+for her honour?  Will you death that she may live a maid?  Will you your
+head to save her finger?  Then, leap down! leap down!  The lists are
+open, the sand is strewed!  Out of your own mouth I have it that if you
+perish she is saved!  Then out, Monsieur!  Cry 'I am a Huguenot!'  And
+God's will be done!"
+
+Tignonville was livid.  "Rather, your will!" he panted.  "Your will, you
+devil!  Nevertheless--"
+
+"You will go!  Ha! ha!  You will go!"
+
+For an instant it seemed that he would go.  Stung by the challenge,
+wrought on by the contempt in which Tavannes held him, he shot a look of
+hate at the tempter; he caught his breath, and laid his hand on the edge
+of the shuttering as if he would leap out.
+
+But it goes hard with him who has once turned back from the foe.  The
+evening light, glancing cold on the burnished pike-points of a group of
+archers who stood near, caught his eye and went chill to his heart.
+Death, not in the arena, not in the sight of shouting thousands, but in
+this darkening street, with an enemy laughing from the window, death with
+no revenge to follow, with no certainty that after all she would be safe,
+such a death could be compassed only by pure love--the love of a child
+for a parent, of a parent for a child, of a man for the one woman in the
+world!
+
+He recoiled.  "You would not spare her!" he cried, his face damp with
+sweat--for he knew now that he would not go.  "You want to be rid of me!
+You would fool me, and then--"
+
+"Out of your own mouth you are convict!" Count Hannibal retorted gravely.
+"It was you who said it!  But still I swear it!  Shall I swear it to
+you?"
+
+But Tignonville recoiled another step and was silent.
+
+"No?  O _preux chevalier_, O gallant knight!  I knew it!  Do you think
+that I did not know with whom I had to deal?"  And Count Hannibal burst
+into harsh laughter, turning his back on the other, as if he no longer
+counted.  "You will neither die with her nor for her!  You were better in
+her petticoats and she in your breeches!  Or no, you are best as you are,
+good father!  Take my advice, M. de Tignonville, have done with arms; and
+with a string of beads, and soft words, and talk of Holy Mother Church,
+you will fool the women as surely as the best of them!  They are not all
+like my cousin, a flouting, gibing, jeering woman--you had poor fortune
+there, I fear?"
+
+"If I had a sword!" Tignonville hissed, his face livid with rage.  "You
+call me coward, because I will not die to please you.  But give me a
+sword, and I will show you if I am a coward!"
+
+Tavannes stood still.  "You are there, are you?" he said in an altered
+tone.  "I--"
+
+"Give me a sword," Tignonville repeated, holding out his open trembling
+hands.  "A sword!  A sword!  'Tis easy taunting an unarmed man, but--"
+
+"You wish to fight?"
+
+"I ask no more!  No more!  Give me a sword," he urged, his voice
+quivering with eagerness.  "It is you who are the coward!"
+
+Count Hannibal stared at him.  "And what am I to get by fighting you?" he
+reasoned slowly.  "You are in my power.  I can do with you as I please.  I
+can call from this window and denounce you, or I can summon my men--"
+
+"Coward!  Coward!"
+
+"Ay?  Well, I will tell you what I will do," with a subtle smile.  "I
+will give you a sword, M. de Tignonville, and I will meet you foot to
+foot here, in this room, on a condition."
+
+"What is it?  What is it?" the young man cried with incredible eagerness.
+"Name your condition!"
+
+"That if I get the better of you, you find me a minister."
+
+"I find you a--"
+
+"A minister.  Yes, that is it.  Or tell me where I can find one."
+
+The young man recoiled.  "Never!" he said.
+
+"You know where to find one."
+
+"Never!  Never!"
+
+"You can lay your hand on one in five minutes, you know."
+
+"I will not."
+
+"Then I shall not fight you!" Count Hannibal answered coolly; and he
+turned from him, and back again.  "You will pardon me if I say, M. de
+Tignonville, that you are in as many minds about fighting as about dying!
+I do not think that you would have made your fortune at Court.  Moreover,
+there is a thing which I fancy you have not considered.  If we fight you
+may kill me, in which case the condition will not help me much.  Or
+I--which is more likely--" he added, with a harsh smile, "may kill you,
+and again I am no better placed."
+
+The young man's pallid features betrayed the conflict in his breast.  To
+do him justice, his hand itched for the sword-hilt--he was brave enough
+for that; he hated, and only so could he avenge himself.  But the penalty
+if he had the worse!  And yet what of it?  He was in hell now, in a hell
+of humiliation, shame, defeat, tormented by this fiend!  'Twas only to
+risk a lower hell.
+
+At last, "I will do it!" he cried hoarsely.  "Give me a sword and look to
+yourself."
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I promise!"
+
+"Good," Count Hannibal answered suavely, "but we cannot fight so, we must
+have more light."
+
+And striding to the door he opened it, and calling the Norman bade him
+move the table and bring candles--a dozen candles; for in the narrow
+streets the light was waning, and in the half-shuttered room it was
+growing dusk.  Tignonville, listening with a throbbing brain, wondered
+that the attendant expressed no surprise and said no word--until Tavannes
+added to his orders one for a pair of swords.
+
+Then, "Monsieur's sword is here," Bigot answered in his half-intelligible
+patois.  "He left it here yester morning."
+
+"You are a good fellow, Bigot," Tavannes answered, with a gaiety and good-
+humour which astonished Tignonville.  "And one of these days you shall
+marry Suzanne."
+
+The Norman smiled sourly and went in search of the weapon.
+
+"You have a poniard?" Count Hannibal continued in the same tone of
+unusual good temper, which had already struck Tignonville.  "Excellent!
+Will you strip, then, or--as we are?  Very good, Monsieur; in the
+unlikely event of fortune declaring for you, you will be in a better
+condition to take care of yourself.  A man running through the streets in
+his shirt is exposed to inconveniences!"  And he laughed gaily.
+
+While he laughed the other listened; and his rage began to give place to
+wonder.  A man who regarded as a pastime a sword and dagger conflict
+between four walls, who, having his adversary in his power, was ready to
+discard the advantage, to descend into the lists, and to risk life for a
+whim, a fancy--such a man was outside his experience, though in Poitou in
+those days of war were men reckoned brave.  For what, he asked himself as
+he waited, had Tavannes to gain by fighting?  The possession of
+Mademoiselle?  But Mademoiselle, if his passion for her overwhelmed him,
+was in his power; and if his promise were a barrier--which seemed
+inconceivable in the light of his reputation--he had only to wait, and to-
+morrow, or the next day, or the next, a minister would be found, and
+without risk he could gain that for which he was now risking all.
+
+Tignonville did not know that it was in the other's nature to find
+pleasure in such utmost ventures.  Nevertheless the recklessness to which
+Tavannes' action bore witness had its effect upon him.  By the time the
+young man's sword arrived something of his passion for the conflict had
+evaporated; and though the touch of the hilt restored his determination,
+the locked door, the confined space, and the unaccustomed light went a
+certain distance towards substituting despair for courage.
+
+The use of the dagger in the duels of that day, however, rendered despair
+itself formidable.  And Tignonville, when he took his place, appeared
+anything but a mean antagonist.  He had removed his robe and cowl, and
+lithe and active as a cat he stood as it were on springs, throwing his
+weight now on this foot and now on that, and was continually in motion.
+The table bearing the candles had been pushed against the window, the
+boarding of which had been replaced by Bigot before he left the room.
+Tignonville had this, and consequently the lights, on his dagger hand;
+and he plumed himself on the advantage, considering his point the more
+difficult to follow.
+
+Count Hannibal did not seem to notice this, however.  "Are you ready?" he
+asked.  And then--
+
+"On guard!" he cried, and he stamped the echo to the word.  But, that
+done, instead of bearing the other down with a headlong rush
+characteristic of the man--as Tignonville feared--he held off warily,
+stooping low; and when his slow opening was met by one as cautious, he
+began to taunt his antagonist.
+
+"Come!" he cried, and feinted half-heartedly.  "Come, Monsieur, are we
+going to fight, or play at fighting?"
+
+"Fight yourself, then!" Tignonville answered, his breath quickened by
+excitement and growing hope.  "'Tis not I hold back!"  And he lunged, but
+was put aside.
+
+"Ca! ca!" Tavannes retorted; and he lunged and parried in his turn, but
+loosely and at a distance.
+
+After which the two moved nearer the door, their eyes glittering as they
+watched one another, their knees bent, the sinews of their backs
+straining for the leap.  Suddenly Tavannes thrust, and leapt away, and as
+his antagonist thrust in return the Count swept the blade aside with a
+strong parry, and for a moment seemed to be on the point of falling on
+Tignonville with the poniard.  But Tignonville retired his right foot
+nimbly, which brought them front to front again.  And the younger man
+laughed.
+
+"Try again, M. le Comte!" he said.  And, with the word, he dashed in
+himself quick as light; for a second the blades ground on one another,
+the daggers hovered, the two suffused faces glared into one another; then
+the pair disengaged again.
+
+The blood trickled from a scratch on Count Hannibal's neck; half an inch
+to the right and the point had found his throat.  And Tignonville,
+elated, laughed anew, and swaying from side to side on his hips, watched
+with growing confidence for a second chance.  Lithe as one of the
+leopards Charles kept at the Louvre, he stooped lower and lower, and more
+and more with each moment took the attitude of the assailant, watching
+for an opening; while Count Hannibal, his face dark and his eyes
+vigilant, stood increasingly on the defence.  The light was waning a
+little, the wicks of the candles were burning long; but neither noticed
+it or dared to remove his eyes from the other's.  Their laboured
+breathing found an echo on the farther side of the door, but this again
+neither observed.
+
+"Well?" Count Hannibal said at last.  "Are you coming?"
+
+"When I please," Tignonville answered; and he feinted but drew back.
+
+The other did the same, and again they watched one another, their eyes
+seeming to grow smaller and smaller.  Gradually a smile had birth on
+Tignonville's lips.  He thrust!  It was parried!  He thrust
+again--parried!  Tavannes, grown still more cautious, gave a yard.
+Tignonville pushed on, but did not allow confidence to master caution.  He
+began, indeed, to taunt his adversary; to flout and jeer him.  But it was
+with a motive.
+
+For suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he repeated the peculiar
+thrust which had been successful before.  This time, however, Tavannes
+was ready.  He put aside the blade with a quick parade, and instead of
+making a riposte sprang within the other's guard.  The two came face to
+face and breast to shoulder, and struck furiously with their daggers.
+Count Hannibal was outside his opponent's sword and had the advantage.
+Tignonville's dagger fell, but glanced off the metalwork of the other's
+hilt; Tavannes' fell swift and hard between the young man's eyes.  The
+Huguenot flung up his hands and staggered back, falling his length on the
+floor.
+
+In an instant Count Hannibal was on his breast, and had knocked away his
+dagger.  Then--
+
+"You own yourself vanquished?" he cried.
+
+The young man, blinded by the blood which trickled down his face, made a
+sign with his hands.  Count Hannibal rose to his feet again, and stood a
+moment looking at his foe without speaking.  Presently he seemed to be
+satisfied.  He nodded, and going to the table dipped a napkin in water.
+He brought it, and carefully supporting Tignonville's head, laved his
+brow.
+
+"It is as I thought," he said, when he had stanched the blood.  "You are
+not hurt, man.  You are stunned.  It is no more than a bruise."
+
+The young man was coming to himself.  "But I thought--" he muttered, and
+broke off to pass his hand over his face.  Then he got up slowly, reeling
+a little, "I thought it was the point," he muttered.
+
+"No, it was the pommel," Tavannes answered dryly.  "It would not have
+served me to kill you.  I could have done that ten times."
+
+Tignonville groaned, and, sitting down at the table, held the napkin to
+his aching head.  One of the candles had been overturned in the struggle
+and lay on the floor, flaring in a little pool of grease.  Tavannes set
+his heel upon it; then, striding to the farther end of the room, he
+picked up Tignonville's dagger and placed it beside his sword on the
+table.  He looked about to see if aught else remained to do, and, finding
+nothing, he returned to Tignonville's side.
+
+"Now, Monsieur," he said in a voice hard and constrained, "I must ask you
+to perform your part of the bargain."
+
+A groan of anguish broke from the unhappy man.  And yet he had set his
+life on the cast; what more could he have done?
+
+"You will not harm him?" he muttered.
+
+"He shall go safe," Count Hannibal replied gravely.
+
+"And--" he fought a moment with his pride, then blurted out the words,
+"you will not tell her--that it was through me--you found him?"
+
+"I will not," Tavannes answered in the same tone.  He stooped and picked
+up the other's robe and cowl, which had fallen from a chair--so that as
+he spoke his eyes were averted.  "She shall never know through me," he
+said.
+
+And Tignonville, his face hidden in his hands, told him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.  ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT.
+
+
+Little by little--while they fought below--the gloom had thickened, and
+night had fallen in the room above.  But Mademoiselle would not have
+candles brought.  Seated in the darkness, on the uppermost step of the
+stairs, her hands clasped about her knees, she listened and listened, as
+if by that action she could avert misfortune; or as if, by going so far
+forward to meet it, she could turn aside the worst.  The women shivering
+in the darkness about her would fain have struck a light and drawn her
+back into the room, for they felt safer there.  But she was not to be
+moved.  The laughter and chatter of the men in the guard-room, the coming
+and going of Bigot as he passed, below but out of sight, had no terrors
+for her; nay, she breathed more freely on the bare open landing of the
+staircase than in the close confines of a room which her fears made
+hateful to her.  Here at least she could listen, her face unseen; and
+listening she bore the suspense more easily.
+
+A turn in the staircase, with the noise which proceeded from the guard-
+room, rendered it difficult to hear what happened in the closed room
+below.  But she thought that if an alarm were raised there she must hear
+it; and as the moments passed and nothing happened, she began to feel
+confident that her lover had made good his escape by the window.
+
+Presently she got a fright.  Three or four men came from the guard-room
+and went, as it seemed to her, to the door of the room with the shattered
+casement.  She told herself that she had rejoiced too soon, and her heart
+stood still.  She waited for a rush of feet, a cry, a struggle.  But
+except an uncertain muffled sound which lasted for some minutes, and was
+followed by a dull shock, she heard nothing more.  And presently the men
+went back whispering, the noise in the guard-room which had been
+partially hushed broke forth anew, and perplexed but relieved she
+breathed again.  Surely he had escaped by this time.  Surely by this time
+he was far away, in the Arsenal, or in some place of refuge!  And she
+might take courage, and feel that for this day the peril was overpast.
+
+"Mademoiselle will have the lights now?" one of the women ventured.
+
+"No! no!" she answered feverishly, and she continued to crouch where she
+was on the stairs, bathing herself and her burning face in the darkness
+and coolness of the stairway.  The air entered freely through a window at
+her elbow, and the place was fresher, were that all, than the room she
+had left.  Javette began to whimper, but she paid no heed to her; a man
+came and went along the passage below, and she heard the outer door
+unbarred, and the jarring tread of three or four men who passed through
+it.  But all without disturbance; and afterwards the house was quiet
+again.  And as on this Monday evening the prime virulence of the massacre
+had begun to abate--though it held after a fashion to the end of the
+week--Paris without was quiet also.  The sounds which had chilled her
+heart at intervals during two days were no longer heard.  A feeling
+almost of peace, almost of comfort--a drowsy feeling, that was three
+parts a reaction from excitement--took possession of her.  In the
+darkness her head sank lower and lower on her knees.  And half an hour
+passed, while Javette whimpered, and Madame Carlat slumbered, her broad
+back propped against the wall.
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle opened her eyes, and saw, three steps below her, a
+strange man whose upward way she barred.  Behind him came Carlat, and
+behind him Bigot, lighting both; and in the confusion of her thoughts as
+she rose to her feet the three, all staring at her in a common amazement,
+seemed a company.  The air entering through the open window beside her
+blew the flame of the candle this way and that, and added to the
+nightmare character of the scene; for by the shifting light the men
+seemed to laugh one moment and scowl the next, and their shadows were now
+high and now low on the wall.  In truth, they were as much amazed at
+coming on her in that place as she at their appearance; but they were
+awake, and she newly roused from sleep; and the advantage was with them.
+
+"What is it?" she cried in a panic.  "What is it?"
+
+"If Mademoiselle will return to her room?" one of the men said
+courteously.
+
+"But--what is it?"  She was frightened.
+
+"If Mademoiselle--"
+
+Then she turned without more and went back into the room, and the three
+followed, and her woman and Madame Carlat.  She stood resting one hand on
+the table while Javette with shaking fingers lighted the candles.  Then--
+
+"Now, Monsieur," she said in a hard voice, "if you will tell me your
+business?"
+
+"You do not know me?"  The stranger's eyes dwelt kindly and pitifully on
+her.
+
+She looked at him steadily, crushing down the fears which knocked at her
+heart.
+
+"No," she said.  "And yet I think I have seen you."
+
+"You saw me a week last Sunday," the stranger answered sorrowfully.  "My
+name is La Tribe.  I preached that day, Mademoiselle, before the King of
+Navarre.  I believe that you were there."
+
+For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted.  Then she
+laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge.
+
+"Oh, he is clever!" she cried.  "He has the wit of the priests!  Or the
+devil!  But you come too late, Monsieur!  You come too late!  The bird
+has flown."
+
+"Mademoiselle--"
+
+"I tell you the bird has flown!" she repeated vehemently.  And her laugh
+of joyless triumph rang through the room.  "He is clever, but I have
+outwitted him!  I have--"
+
+She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck too
+by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were turned on
+her.  And her lip began to quiver.
+
+"What?" she muttered.  "Why do you look at me so?  He has not"--she
+turned from one to another--"he has not been taken?"
+
+"M. Tignonville?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"He is below."
+
+"Ah!" she said.
+
+They expected to see her break down, perhaps to see her fall.  But she
+only groped blindly for a chair and sat.  And for a moment there was
+silence in the room.  It was the Huguenot minister who broke it in a tone
+formal and solemn.
+
+"Listen, all present!" he said slowly.  "The ways of God are past finding
+out.  For two days in the midst of great perils I have been preserved by
+His hand and fed by His bounty, and I am told that I shall live if, in
+this matter, I do the will of those who hold me in their power.  But be
+assured--and hearken all," he continued, lowering his voice to a sterner
+note.  "Rather than marry this woman to this man against her will--if
+indeed in His sight such marriage can be--rather than save my life by
+such base compliance, I will die not once but ten times!  See.  I am
+ready!  I will make no defence!"  And he opened his arms as if to welcome
+the stroke.  "If there be trickery here, if there has been practising
+below, where they told me this and that, it shall not avail!  Until I
+hear from Mademoiselle's own lips that she is willing, I will not say
+over her so much as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay!"
+
+"She is willing!"
+
+La Tribe turned sharply, and beheld the speaker.  It was Count Hannibal,
+who had entered a few seconds earlier, and had taken his stand within the
+door.
+
+"She is willing!" Tavannes repeated quietly.  And if, in this moment of
+the fruition of his schemes, he felt his triumph, he masked it under a
+face of sombre purpose.  "Do you doubt me, man?"
+
+"From her own lips!" the other replied, undaunted--and few could say as
+much--by that harsh presence.  "From no other's!"
+
+"Sirrah, you--"
+
+"I can die.  And you can no more, my lord!" the minister answered
+bravely.  "You have no threat can move me."
+
+"I am not sure of that," Tavannes answered, more blandly.  "But had you
+listened to me and been less anxious to be brave, M. La Tribe, where no
+danger is, you had learned that here is no call for heroics!  Mademoiselle
+is willing, and will tell you so."
+
+"With her own lips?"
+
+Count Hannibal raised his eyebrows.  "With her own lips, if you will," he
+said.  And then, advancing a step and addressing her, with unusual
+gravity, "Mademoiselle de Vrillac," he said, "you hear what this
+gentleman requires.  Will you be pleased to confirm what I have said?"
+
+She did not answer, and in the intense silence which held the room in its
+freezing grasp a woman choked, another broke into weeping.  The colour
+ebbed from the cheeks of more than one; the men fidgeted on their feet.
+
+Count Hannibal looked round, his head high.  "There is no call for
+tears," he said; and whether he spoke in irony or in a strange obtuseness
+was known only to himself.  "Mademoiselle is in no hurry--and rightly--to
+answer a question so momentous.  Under the pressure of utmost peril, she
+passed her word; the more reason that, now the time has come to redeem
+it, she should do so at leisure and after thought.  Since she gave her
+promise, Monsieur, she has had more than one opportunity of evading its
+fulfilment.  But she is a Vrillac, and I know that nothing is farther
+from her thoughts."
+
+He was silent a moment; and then, "Mademoiselle," he said, "I would not
+hurry you."
+
+Her eyes were closed, but at that her lips moved.  "I am--willing," she
+whispered.  And a fluttering sigh, of relief, of pity, of God knows what,
+filled the room.
+
+"You are satisfied, M. La Tribe?"
+
+"I do not--"
+
+"Man!"  With a growl as of a tiger, Count Hannibal dropped the mask.  In
+two strides he was at the minister's side, his hand gripped his shoulder;
+his face, flushed with passion, glared into his.  "Will you play with
+lives?" he hissed.  "If you do not value your own, have you no thought of
+others?  Of these?  Look and count!  Have you no bowels?  If she will
+save them, will not you?"
+
+"My own I do not value."
+
+"Curse your own!" Tavannes cried in furious scorn.  And he shook the
+other to and fro.  "Who thought of your life?  Will you doom these?  Will
+you give them to the butcher?"
+
+"My lord," La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, "if she be
+willing--"
+
+"She is willing."
+
+"I have nought to say.  But I caught her words indistinctly.  And without
+her consent--"
+
+"She shall speak more plainly.  Mademoiselle--"
+
+She anticipated him.  She had risen, and stood looking straight before
+her, seeing nothing.
+
+"I am willing," she muttered with a strange gesture, "if it must be."
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"If it must be," she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh.  And her
+chin dropped on her breast.  Then, abruptly, suddenly--it was a strange
+thing to see--she looked up.  A change as complete as the change which
+had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her.  She sprang
+to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes.
+"You are not deceiving me?" she cried.  "You have Tignonville below?
+You--oh, no, no!"  And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her
+voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, "You have not!  You are
+deceiving me!  He has escaped, and you have lied to me!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you have lied to me!"  It was the last fierce flicker of hope when
+hope seemed dead: the last clutch of the drowning at the straw that
+floated before the eyes.
+
+He laughed harshly.  "You will be my wife in five minutes," he said, "and
+you give me the lie?  A week, and you will know me better!  A month,
+and--but we will talk of that another time.  For the present," he
+continued, turning to La Tribe, "do you, sir, tell her that the gentleman
+is below.  Perhaps she will believe you.  For you know him."
+
+La Tribe looked at her sorrowfully; his heart bled for her.  "I have seen
+M. de Tignonville," he said.  "And M. le Comte says truly.  He is in the
+same case with ourselves, a prisoner."
+
+"You have seen him?" she wailed.
+
+"I left him in the room below, when I mounted the stairs."
+
+Count Hannibal laughed, the grim mocking laugh which seemed to revel in
+the pain it inflicted.
+
+"Will you have him for a witness?" he cried.  "There could not be a
+better, for he will not forget.  Shall I fetch him?"
+
+She bowed her head, shivering.  "Spare me that," she said.  And she
+pressed her hands to her eyes while an uncontrollable shudder passed over
+her frame.  Then she stepped forward: "I am ready," she whispered.  "Do
+with me as you will!"
+
+* * * * *
+
+When they had all gone out and closed the door behind them, and the two
+whom the minister had joined were left together, Count Hannibal continued
+for a time to pace the room, his hands clasped at his back, and his head
+sunk somewhat on his chest.  His thoughts appeared to run in a new
+channel, and one, strange to say, widely diverted from his bride and from
+that which he had just done.  For he did not look her way, or, for a
+time, speak to her.  He stood once to snuff a candle, doing it with an
+absent face: and once to look, but still absently, and as if he read no
+word of it, at the marriage writing which lay, the ink still wet, upon
+the table.  After each of these interruptions he resumed his steady
+pacing to and fro, to and fro, nor did his eye wander once in the
+direction of her chair.
+
+And she waited.  The conflict of emotions, the strife between hope and
+fear, the final defeat had stunned her; had left her exhausted, almost
+apathetic.  Yet not quite, nor wholly.  For when in his walk he came a
+little nearer to her, a chill perspiration broke out on her brow, and
+shudderings crept over her; and when he passed farther from her--and then
+only, it seemed--she breathed again.  But the change lay beneath the
+surface, and cheated the eye.  Into her attitude, as she sat, her hands
+clasped on her lap, her eyes fixed, came no apparent change or shadow of
+movement.
+
+Suddenly, with a dull shock, she became aware that he was speaking.
+
+"There was need of haste," he said, his tone strangely low and free from
+emotion, "for I am under bond to leave Paris to-morrow for Angers,
+whither I bear letters from the King.  And as matters stood, there was no
+one with whom I could leave you.  I trust Bigot; he is faithful, and you
+may trust him, Madame, fair or foul!  But he is not quick-witted.
+Badelon, also, you may trust.  Bear it in mind.  Your woman Javette is
+not faithful; but as her life is guaranteed she must stay with us until
+she can be securely placed.  Indeed, I must take all with me--with one
+exception--for the priests and monks rule Paris, and they do not love me,
+nor would spare aught at my word."
+
+He was silent a few moments.  Then he resumed in the same tone, "You
+ought to know how we, Tavannes, stand.  It is by Monsieur and the Queen-
+Mother; and _contra_ the Guises.  We have all been in this matter; but
+the latter push and we are pushed, and the old crack will reopen.  As it
+is, I cannot answer for much beyond the reach of my arm.  Therefore, we
+take all with us except M. de Tignonville, who desires to be conducted to
+the Arsenal."
+
+She had begun to listen with averted eyes.  But as he continued to speak
+surprise awoke in her, and something stronger than surprise--amazement,
+stupefaction.  Slowly her eyes came to him, and when he ceased to speak--
+
+"Why do you tell me these things?" she muttered, her dry lips framing the
+words with difficulty.
+
+"Because it behoves you to know them," he answered, thoughtfully tapping
+the table.  "I have no one, save my brother, whom I can trust."
+
+She would not ask him why he trusted her, nor why he thought he could
+trust her.  For a moment or two she watched him, while he, with his eyes
+lowered, stood in deep thought.  At last he looked up and his eyes met
+hers.
+
+"Come!" he said abruptly, and in a different tone, "we must end this!  Is
+it to be a kiss or a blow between us?"
+
+She rose, though her knees shook under her; and they stood face to face,
+her face white as paper.
+
+"What--do you mean?" she whispered.
+
+"Is it to be a kiss or a blow?" he repeated.  "A husband must be a lover,
+Madame, or a master, or both!  I am content to be the one or the other,
+or both, as it shall please you.  But the one I will be."
+
+"Then, a thousand times, a blow," she cried, her eyes flaming, "from
+you!"
+
+He wondered at her courage, but he hid his wonder.  "So be it!" he
+answered.  And before she knew what he would be at, he struck her sharply
+across the cheek with the glove which he held in his hand.  She recoiled
+with a low cry, and her cheek blazed scarlet where he had struck it.
+
+"So be it!" he continued sombrely.  "The choice shall be yours, but you
+will come to me daily for the one or the other.  If I cannot be lover,
+Madame, I will be master.  And by this sign I will have you know it,
+daily, and daily remember it."
+
+She stared at him, her bosom rising and falling, in an astonishment too
+deep for words.  But he did not heed her.  He did not look at her again.
+He had already turned to the door, and while she looked he passed through
+it, he closed it behind him.  And she was alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.  IN THE ORLEANNAIS.
+
+
+"But you fear him?"
+
+"Fear him?" Madame St. Lo answered; and, to the surprise of the Countess,
+she made a little face of contempt.  "No; why should I fear him?  I fear
+him no more than the puppy leaping at old Sancho's bridle fears his tall
+playfellow!  Or than the cloud you see above us fears the wind before
+which it flies!"  She pointed to a white patch, the size of a man's hand,
+which hung above the hill on their left hand and formed the only speck in
+the blue summer sky.  "Fear him?  Not I!"  And, laughing gaily, she put
+her horse at a narrow rivulet which crossed the grassy track on which
+they rode.
+
+"But he is hard?" the Countess murmured in a low voice, as she regained
+her companion's side.
+
+"Hard?" Madame St. Lo rejoined with a gesture of pride.  "Ay, hard as the
+stones in my jewelled ring!  Hard as flint, or the nether millstone--to
+his enemies!  But to women?  Bah!  Who ever heard that he hurt a woman?"
+
+"Why, then, is he so feared?" the Countess asked, her eyes on the subject
+of their discussion--a solitary figure riding some fifty paces in front
+of them.
+
+"Because he counts no cost!" her companion answered.  "Because he killed
+Savillon in the court of the Louvre, though he knew his life the forfeit.
+He would have paid the forfeit too, or lost his right hand, if Monsieur,
+for his brother the Marshal's sake, had not intervened.  But Savillon had
+whipped his dog, you see.  Then he killed the Chevalier de Millaud, but
+'twas in fair fight, in the snow, in their shirts.  For that, Millaud's
+son lay in wait for him with two, in the passage under the Chatelet; but
+Hannibal wounded one, and the others saved themselves.  Undoubtedly he is
+feared!" she added with the same note of pride in her voice.
+
+The two who talked, rode at the rear of the little company which had left
+Paris at daybreak two days before, by the Porte St. Jacques.  Moving
+steadily south-westward by the lesser roads and bridle-tracks--for Count
+Hannibal seemed averse from the great road--they had lain the second
+night in a village three leagues from Bonneval.  A journey of two days on
+fresh horses is apt to change scenery and eye alike; but seldom has an
+alteration--in themselves and all about them--as great as that which
+blessed this little company, been wrought in so short a time.  From the
+stifling wynds and evil-smelling lanes of Paris, they had passed to the
+green uplands, the breezy woods and babbling streams of the upper
+Orleannais; from sights and sounds the most appalling, to the solitude of
+the sandy heath, haunt of the great bustard, or the sunshine of the
+hillside, vibrating with the songs of larks; from an atmosphere of terror
+and gloom to the freedom of God's earth and sky.  Numerous enough--they
+numbered a score of armed men--to defy the lawless bands which had their
+lairs in the huge forest of Orleans, they halted where they pleased: at
+mid-day under a grove of chestnut-trees, or among the willows beside a
+brook; at night, if they willed it, under God's heaven.  Far, not only
+from Paris, but from the great road, with its gibbets and pillories--the
+great road which at that date ran through a waste, no peasant living
+willingly within sight of it--they rode in the morning and in the
+evening, resting in the heat of the day.  And though they had left Paris
+with much talk of haste, they rode more at leisure with every league.
+
+For whatever Tavannes' motive, it was plain that he was in no hurry to
+reach his destination.  Nor for that matter were any of his company.
+Madame St. Lo, who had seized the opportunity of escaping from the
+capital under her cousin's escort, was in an ill-humour with cities, and
+declaimed much on the joys of a cell in the woods.  For the time the
+coarsest nature and the dullest rider had had enough of alarums and
+conflicts.
+
+The whole company, indeed, though it moved in some fashion of array with
+an avant and a rear-guard, the ladies riding together, and Count Hannibal
+proceeding solitary in the midst, formed as peaceful a band, and one as
+innocently diverted, as if no man of them had ever grasped pike or blown
+a match.  There was an old rider among them who had seen the sack of
+Rome, and the dead face of the great Constable the idol of the Free
+Companies.  But he had a taste for simples and much skill in them; and
+when Madame had once seen Badelon on his knees in the grass searching for
+plants, she lost her fear of him.  Bigot, with his low brow and matted
+hair, was the abject slave of Suzanne, Madame St. Lo's woman, who twitted
+him mercilessly on his Norman _patois_, and poured the vials of her scorn
+on him a dozen times a day.  In all, with La Tribe and the Carlats,
+Madame St. Lo's servants, and the Countess's following, they numbered not
+far short of two score; and when they halted at noon, and under the
+shadow of some leafy tree, ate their mid-day meal, or drowsed to the
+tinkle of Madame St. Lo's lute, it was difficult to believe that Paris
+existed, or that these same people had so lately left its blood-stained
+pavements.
+
+They halted this morning a little earlier than usual.  Madame St. Lo had
+barely answered her companion's question before the subject of their
+discussion swung himself from old Sancho's back, and stood waiting to
+assist them to dismount.  Behind him, where the green valley through
+which the road passed narrowed to a rocky gate, an old mill stood among
+willows at the foot of a mound.  On the mound behind it a ruined castle
+which had stood siege in the Hundred Years' War raised its grey walls;
+and beyond this the stream which turned the mill poured over rocks with a
+cool rushing sound that proved irresistible.  The men, their horses
+watered and hobbled, went off, shouting like boys, to bathe below the
+falls; and after a moment's hesitation Count Hannibal rose from the grass
+on which he had flung himself.
+
+"Guard that for me, Madame," he said.  And he dropped a packet, bravely
+sealed and tied with a silk thread, into the Countess's lap.  "'Twill be
+safer than leaving it in my clothes.  Ohe!"  And he turned to Madame St.
+Lo.  "Would you fancy a life that was all gipsying, cousin?"  And if
+there was irony in his voice, there was desire in his eyes.
+
+"There is only one happy man in the world," she answered, with
+conviction.
+
+"By name?"
+
+"The hermit of Compiegne."
+
+"And in a week you would be wild for a masque!" he said cynically.  And
+turning on his heel he followed the men.
+
+Madame St. Lo sighed complacently.  "Heigho!" she said.  "He's right!  We
+are never content, _ma mie_!  When I am trifling in the Gallery my heart
+is in the greenwood.  And when I have eaten black bread and drank spring
+water for a fortnight I do nothing but dream of Zamet's, and white
+mulberry tarts!  And you are in the same case.  You have saved your round
+white neck, or it has been saved for you, by not so much as the thickness
+of Zamet's pie-crust--I declare my mouth is beginning to water for
+it!--and instead of being thankful and making the best of things, you are
+thinking of poor Madame d'Yverne, or dreaming of your calf-love!"
+
+The girl's face--for a girl she was, though they called her Madame--began
+to work.  She struggled a moment with her emotion, and then broke down,
+and fell to weeping silently.  For two days she had sat in public and not
+given way.  But the reference to her lover was too much for her strength.
+
+Madame St. Lo looked at her with eyes which were not unkindly.
+
+"Sits the wind in that quarter?" she murmured.  "I thought so!  But
+there, my dear, if you don't put that packet in your gown you'll wash out
+the address!  Moreover, if you ask me, I don't think the young man is
+worth it.  It is only that what we have not got--we want!"
+
+But the young Countess had borne to the limit of her powers.  With an
+incoherent word she rose to her feet, and walked hurriedly away.  The
+thought of what was and of what might have been, the thought of the lover
+who still--though he no longer seemed, even to her, the perfect hero--held
+a place in her heart, filled her breast to overflowing.  She longed for
+some spot where she could weep unseen; where the sunshine and the blue
+sky would not mock her grief; and seeing in front of her a little clump
+of alders, which grew beside the stream, in a bend that in winter was
+marshy, she hastened towards it.
+
+Madame St. Lo saw her figure blend with the shadow of the trees.
+
+"Quite _a la_ Ronsard, I give my word!" she murmured.  "And now she is
+out of sight!  _La, la_!  I could play at the game myself, and carve
+sweet sorrow on the barks of trees, if it were not so lonesome!  And if I
+had a man!"
+
+And gazing pensively at the stream and the willows, my lady tried to work
+herself into a proper frame of mind; now murmuring the name of one
+gallant, and now, finding it unsuited, the name of another.  But the soft
+inflection would break into a giggle, and finally into a yawn; and, tired
+of the attempt, she began to pluck grass and throw it from her.  By-and-by
+she discovered that Madame Carlat and the women, who had their place a
+little apart, had disappeared; and affrighted by the solitude and
+silence--for neither of which she was made--she sprang up and stared
+about her, hoping to discern them.  Right and left, however, the sweep of
+hillside curved upward to the skyline, lonely and untenanted; behind her
+the castled rock frowned down on the rugged gorge and filled it with
+dispiriting shadow.  Madame St. Lo stamped her foot on the turf.
+
+"The little fool!" she murmured pettishly.  "Does she think that I am to
+be murdered that she may fatten on sighs?  Oh, come up, Madame, you must
+be dragged out of this!"  And she started briskly towards the alders,
+intent on gaining company as quickly as possible.
+
+She had gone about fifty yards, and had as many more to traverse when she
+halted.  A man, bent double, was moving stealthily along the farther side
+of the brook, a little in front of her.  Now she saw him, now she lost
+him; now she caught a glimpse of him again, through a screen of willow
+branches.  He moved with the utmost caution, as a man moves who is
+pursued or in danger; and for a moment she deemed him a peasant whom the
+bathers had disturbed and who was bent on escaping.  But when he came
+opposite to the alder-bed she saw that that was his point, for he
+crouched down, sheltered by a willow, and gazed eagerly among the trees,
+always with his back to her; and then he waved his hand to some one in
+the wood.
+
+Madame St. Lo drew in her breath.  As if he had heard the sound--which
+was impossible--the man dropped down where he stood, crawled a yard or
+two on his face, and disappeared.
+
+Madame stared a moment, expecting to see him or hear him.  Then, as
+nothing happened, she screamed.  She was a woman of quick impulses,
+essentially feminine; and she screamed three or four times, standing
+where she was, her eyes on the edge of the wood.  "If that does not bring
+her out, nothing will!" she thought.
+
+It brought her.  An instant, and the Countess appeared, and hurried in
+dismay to her side.
+
+"What is it?" the younger woman asked, glancing over her shoulder; for
+all the valley, all the hills were peaceful, and behind Madame St. Lo--but
+the lady had not discovered it--the servants who had returned were laying
+the meal.  "What is it?" she repeated anxiously.
+
+"Who was it?" Madame St. Lo asked curtly.  She was quite calm now.
+
+"Who was--who?"
+
+"The man in the wood?"
+
+The Countess stared a moment, then laughed.  "Only the old soldier they
+call Badelon, gathering simples.  Did you think that he would harm me?"
+
+"It was not old Badelon whom I saw!" Madame St. Lo retorted.  "It was a
+younger man, who crept along the other side of the brook, keeping under
+cover.  When I first saw him he was there," she continued, pointing to
+the place.  "And he crept on and on until he came opposite to you.  Then
+he waved his hand."
+
+"To me?"
+
+Madame nodded.
+
+"But if you saw him, who was he?" the Countess asked.
+
+"I did not see his face," Madame St. Lo answered.  "But he waved to you.
+That I saw."
+
+The Countess had a thought which slowly flooded her face with crimson.
+Madame St. Lo saw the change, saw the tender light which on a sudden
+softened the other's eyes; and the same thought occurred to her.  And
+having a mind to punish her companion for her reticence--for she did not
+doubt that the girl knew more than she acknowledged--she proposed that
+they should return and find Badelon, and learn if he had seen the man.
+
+"Why?" Madame Tavannes asked.  And she stood stubbornly, her head high.
+"Why should we?"
+
+"To clear it up," the elder woman answered mischievously.  "But perhaps,
+it were better to tell your husband and let his men search the coppice."
+
+The colour left the Countess's face as quickly as it had come.  For a
+moment she was tongue-tied.  Then--
+
+"Have we not had enough of seeking and being sought?" she cried, more
+bitterly than befitted the occasion.  "Why should we hunt him?  I am not
+timid, and he did me no harm.  I beg, Madame, that you will do me the
+favour of being silent on the matter."
+
+"Oh, if you insist?  But what a pother--"
+
+"I did not see him, and he did not see me," Madame de Tavannes answered
+vehemently.  "I fail, therefore, to understand why we should harass him,
+whoever he be.  Besides, M. de Tavannes is waiting for us."
+
+"And M. de Tignonville--is following us!" Madame St. Lo muttered under
+her breath.  And she made a face at the other's back.
+
+She was silent, however.  They returned to the others and nothing of
+import, it would seem, had happened.  The soft summer air played on the
+meal laid under the willows as it had played on the meal of yesterday
+laid under the chestnut-trees.  The horses grazed within sight, moving
+now and again, with a jingle of trappings or a jealous neigh: the women's
+chatter vied with the unceasing sound of the mill-stream.  After dinner,
+Madame St. Lo touched the lute, and Badelon--Badelon who had seen the
+sack of the Colonna's Palace, and been served by cardinals on the
+knee--fed a water-rat, which had its home in one of the willow-stumps,
+with carrot-parings.  One by one the men laid themselves to sleep with
+their faces on their arms; and to the eyes all was as all had been
+yesterday in this camp of armed men living peacefully.
+
+But not to the Countess!  She had accepted her life, she had resigned
+herself, she had marvelled that it was no worse.  After the horrors of
+Paris the calm of the last two days had fallen on her as balm on a wound.
+Worn out in body and mind, she had rested, and only rested; without
+thought, almost without emotion, save for the feeling, half fear, half
+curiosity, which stirred her in regard to the strange man, her husband.
+Who on his side left her alone.
+
+But the last hour had wrought a change.  Her eyes were grown restless,
+her colour came and went.  The past stirred in its shallow--ah, so
+shallow--grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might,
+thrust out hands to plague and torment her.  If the man who sought to
+speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the
+skirts of her party, were Tignonville--her lover, who at his own request
+had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris--then
+her plight was a sorry one.  For what woman, wedded as she had been
+wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his persistence?  And
+yet, lover and husband!  What peril, what shame the words had often
+spelled!  At the thought only she trembled and her colour ebbed.  She
+saw, as one who stands on the brink of a precipice, the depth which
+yawned before her.  She asked herself, shivering, if she would ever sink
+to _that_.
+
+All the loyalty of a strong nature, all the virtue of a good woman,
+revolted against the thought.  True, her husband--husband she must call
+him--had not deserved her love; but his bizarre magnanimity, the gloomy,
+disdainful kindness with which he had crowned possession, even the unity
+of their interests, which he had impressed upon her in so strange a
+fashion, claimed a return in honour.
+
+To be paid--how? how?  That was the crux which perplexed, which
+frightened, which harassed her.  For, if she told her suspicions, she
+exposed her lover to capture by one who had no longer a reason to be
+merciful.  And if she sought occasion to see Tignonville and so to
+dissuade him, she did it at deadly risk to herself.  Yet what other
+course lay open to her if she would not stand by?  If she would not play
+the traitor?  If she--
+
+"Madame,"--it was her husband, and he spoke to her suddenly,--"are you
+not well?"  And, looking up guiltily, she found his eyes fixed curiously
+on hers.
+
+Her face turned red and white and red again, and she faltered something
+and looked from him, but only to meet Madame St. Lo's eyes.  My lady
+laughed softly in sheer mischief.
+
+"What is it?" Count Hannibal asked sharply.
+
+But Madame St. Lo's answer was a line of Ronsard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.  ON THE CASTLE HILL.
+
+
+Thrice she hummed it, bland and smiling.  Then from the neighbouring
+group came an interruption.  The wine he had drunk had put it into
+Bigot's head to snatch a kiss from Suzanne; and Suzanne's modesty, which
+was very nice in company, obliged her to squeal.  The uproar which
+ensued, the men backing the man and the women the woman, brought Tavannes
+to his feet.  He did not speak, but a glance from his eyes was enough.
+There was not one who failed to see that something was amiss with him,
+and a sudden silence fell on the party.
+
+He turned to the Countess.  "You wished to see the castle?" he said.  "You
+had better go now, but not alone."  He cast his eyes over the company,
+and summoned La Tribe, who was seated with the Carlats.  "Go with
+Madame," he said curtly.  "She has a mind to climb the hill.  Bear in
+mind, we start at three, and do not venture out of hearing."
+
+"I understand, M. le Comte," the minister answered.  He spoke quietly,
+but there was a strange light in his face as he turned to go with her.
+
+None the less he was silent until Madame's lagging feet--for all her
+interest in the expedition was gone--had borne her a hundred paces from
+the company.  Then--
+
+"Who knoweth our thoughts and forerunneth all our desires," he murmured.
+And when she turned to him, astonished, "Madame," he continued, "I have
+prayed, ah, how I have prayed, for this opportunity of speaking to you!
+And it has come.  I would it had come this morning, but it has come.  Do
+not start or look round; many eyes are on us, and, alas! I have that to
+say to you which it will move you to hear, and that to ask of you which
+it must task your courage to perform."
+
+She began to tremble, and stood looking up the green slope to the broken
+grey wall which crowned its summit.
+
+"What is it?" she whispered, commanding herself with an effort.  "What is
+it?  If it have aught to do with M. Tignonville--"
+
+"It has not!"
+
+In her surprise--for although she had put the question she had felt no
+doubt of the answer--she started and turned to him.
+
+"It has not?" she exclaimed almost incredulously.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what is it, Monsieur?" she replied, a little haughtily.  "What can
+there be that should move me so?"
+
+"Life or death, Madame," he answered solemnly.  "Nay, more; for since
+Providence has given me this chance of speaking to you, a thing of which
+I despaired, I know that the burden is laid on us, and that it is guilt
+or it is innocence, according as we refuse the burden or bear it."
+
+"What is it, then?" she cried impatiently.  "What is it?"
+
+"I tried to speak to you this morning."
+
+"Was it you, then, whom Madame St. Lo saw stalking me before dinner?
+
+"It was."
+
+She clasped her hands and heaved a sigh of relief.  "Thank God,
+Monsieur!" she replied.  "You have lifted a weight from me.  I fear
+nothing in comparison of that.  Nothing!"
+
+"Alas!" he answered sombrely, "there is much to fear, for others if not
+for ourselves!  Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears
+always in his belt?  What it is he carries with such care?  What it was
+he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?"
+
+"Letters from the King."
+
+"Yes, but the import of those letters?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And yet, should they be written in letters of blood!" the minister
+exclaimed, his face kindling.  "They should scorch the hands that hold
+them and blister the eyes that read them.  They are the fire and the
+sword!  They are the King's order to do at Angers as they have done in
+Paris.  To slay all of the religion who are found there--and they are
+many!  To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the unborn
+child!  See yonder hawk!" he continued, pointing with a shaking hand to a
+falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the movement of
+its wings invisible.  "How it disports itself in the face of the sun!  How
+easy its way, how smooth its flight!  But see, it drops upon its prey in
+the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its beauty is slaughter!  So
+is it with yonder company!"  His finger sank until it indicated the
+little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow four hundred feet below
+them, with every man and horse, and the very camp-kettle, clear-cut and
+visible, though diminished by distance to fairy-like proportions.  "So it
+is with yonder company!" he repeated sternly.  "They play and are merry,
+and one fishes and another sleeps!  But at the end of the journey is
+death.  Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!"
+
+She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot behind
+her, and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders, and the
+little camp.  The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the stillness
+of an August afternoon.  But his words went home so truly that the sunlit
+landscape before the eyes added one more horror to the picture he called
+up before the mind.
+
+The Countess turned white and sick.  "Are you sure?" she whispered at
+last.
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Ah, God!" she cried, "are we never to have peace?"  And turning from the
+valley, she walked some distance into the grass court, and stood.  After
+a time, she turned to him; he had followed her doggedly, pace for pace.
+"What do you want me to do?" she cried, despair in her voice.  "What can
+I do?"
+
+"Were the letters he bears destroyed--"
+
+"The letters?"
+
+"Yes, were the letters destroyed," La Tribe answered relentlessly, "he
+could do nothing!  Nothing!  Without that authority the magistrates of
+Angers would not move.  He could do nothing.  And men and women and
+children--men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry for
+vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved them--will
+live!  Will live!" he repeated, with a softening eye.  And with an all-
+embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open heavens, the
+sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them round.  "Will live!"
+
+She drew a deep breath.  "And you have brought me here," she said, "to
+ask me to do this?"
+
+"I was sent here to ask you to do this."
+
+"Why me?  Why me?" she wailed, and she held out her open hands to him,
+her face wan and colourless.  "You come to me, a woman!  Why to me?"
+
+"You are his wife!"
+
+"And he is my husband!"
+
+"Therefore he trusts you," was the unyielding, the pitiless answer.  "You,
+and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this."
+
+She gazed at him in astonishment.  "And it is you who say that?" she
+faltered, after a pause.  "You who made us one, who now bid me betray
+him, whom I have sworn to love?  To ruin him whom I have sworn to
+honour?"
+
+"I do!" he answered solemnly.  "On my head be the guilt, and on yours the
+merit."
+
+"Nay, but--" she cried quickly, and her eyes glittered with passion--"do
+you take both guilt and merit!  You are a man," she continued, her words
+coming quickly in her excitement, "he is but a man!  Why do you not call
+him aside, trick him apart on some pretence or other, and when there are
+but you two, man to man, wrench the warrant from him?  Staking your life
+against his, with all those lives for prize?  And save them or perish?
+Why I, even I, a woman, could find it in my heart to do that, were he not
+my husband!  Surely you, you who are a man, and young--"
+
+"Am no match for him in strength or arms," the minister answered sadly.
+"Else would I do it!  Else would I stake my life, Heaven knows, as gladly
+to save their lives as I sit down to meat!  But I should fail, and if I
+failed all were lost.  Moreover," he continued solemnly, "I am certified
+that this task has been set for you.  It was not for nothing, Madame, nor
+to save one poor household that you were joined to this man; but to
+ransom all these lives and this great city.  To be the Judith of our
+faith, the saviour of Angers, the--"
+
+"Fool!  Fool!" she cried.  "Will you be silent?"  And she stamped the
+turf passionately, while her eyes blazed in her white face.  "I am no
+Judith, and no madwoman as you are fain to make me.  Mad?" she continued,
+overwhelmed with agitation, "My God, I would I were, and I should be free
+from this!"  And, turning, she walked a little way from him with the
+gesture of one under a crushing burden.
+
+He waited a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and still she did not
+return.  At length she came back, her bearing more composed; she looked
+at him, and her eyes seized his and seemed as if they would read his
+soul.
+
+"Are you sure," she said, "of what you have told me?  Will you swear that
+the contents of these letters are as you say?"
+
+"As I live," he answered gravely.  "As God lives."
+
+"And you know--of no other way, Monsieur?  Of no other way?" she repeated
+slowly and piteously.
+
+"Of none, Madame, of none, I swear."
+
+She sighed deeply, and stood sunk in thought.  Then, "When do we reach
+Angers?" she asked heavily.
+
+"The day after to-morrow."
+
+"I have--until the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes.  To-night we lie near Vendome."
+
+"And to-morrow night?"
+
+"Near a place called La Fleche.  It is possible," he went on with
+hesitation--for he did not understand her--"that he may bathe to-morrow,
+and may hand the packet to you, as he did to-day when I vainly sought
+speech with you.  If he does that--"
+
+"Yes?" she said, her eyes on his face.
+
+"The taking will be easy.  But when he finds you have it not"--he
+faltered anew--"it may go hard with you."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"And there, I think, I can help you.  If you will stray from the party, I
+will meet you and destroy the letter.  That done--and would God it were
+done already--I will take to flight as best I can, and you will raise the
+alarm and say that I robbed you of it!  And if you tear your dress--"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+He looked a question.
+
+"No!" she repeated in a low voice.  "If I betray him I will not lie to
+him!  And no other shall pay the price!  If I ruin him it shall be
+between him and me, and no other shall have part in it!"
+
+He shook his head.  "I do not know," he murmured, "what he may do to
+you!"
+
+"Nor I," she said proudly.  "That will be for him."
+
+* * * * *
+
+Curious eyes had watched the two as they climbed the hill.  For the path
+ran up the slope to the gap which served for gate, much as the path leads
+up to the Castle Beautiful in old prints of the Pilgrim's journey, and
+Madame St. Lo had marked the first halt and the second, and, noting every
+gesture, had lost nothing of the interview save the words.  But until the
+two, after pausing a moment, passed out of sight she made no sign.  Then
+she laughed.  And as Count Hannibal, at whom the laugh was aimed, did not
+heed her, she laughed again.  And she hummed the line of Ronsard.
+
+Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.
+
+"I wonder what you would do," she said, "if the old lover followed us,
+and she went off with him!"
+
+"She would not go," he answered coldly, and without looking up.
+
+"But if he rode off with her?"
+
+"She would come back on her feet!"
+
+Madame St. Lo's prudence was not proof against that.  She had the woman's
+inclination to hide a woman's secret; and she had not intended, when she
+laughed, to do more than play with the formidable man with whom so few
+dared to play.  Now, stung by his tone and his assurance, she must needs
+show him that his trustfulness had no base.  And, as so often happens in
+the circumstances, she went a little farther than the facts bore her.
+
+"Any way, he has followed us so far!" she cried viciously.
+
+"M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"Yes.  I saw him this morning while you were bathing.  She left me and
+went into the little coppice.  He came down the other side of the brook,
+stooping and running, and went to join her."
+
+"How did he cross the brook?"
+
+Madame St. Lo blushed.  "Old Badelon was there, gathering simples," she
+said.  "He scared him.  And he crawled away."
+
+"Then he did not cross?"
+
+"No.  I did not say he did!"
+
+"Nor speak to her?"
+
+"No.  But if you think it will pass so next time--you do not know much of
+women!"
+
+"Of women generally, not much," he answered, grimly polite.  "Of this
+woman a great deal!"
+
+"You looked in her big eyes, I suppose!"  Madame St. Lo cried with heat.
+"And straightway fell down and worshipped her!"  She liked rather than
+disliked the Countess; but she was of the lightest, and the least
+opposition drove her out of her course.  "And you think you know her!  And
+she, if she could save you from death by opening an eye, would go with a
+patch on it till her dying day!  Take my word for it, Monsieur, between
+her and her lover you will come to harm."
+
+Count Hannibal's swarthy face darkened a tone, and his eyes grew a very
+little smaller.
+
+"I fancy that he runs the greater risk," he muttered.
+
+"You may deal with him, but, for her--"
+
+"I can deal with her.  You deal with some women with a whip--"
+
+"You would whip me, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," he said quietly.  "It would do you good, Madame.  And with other
+women otherwise.  There are women who, if they are well frightened, will
+not deceive you.  And there are others who will not deceive you though
+they are frightened.  Madame de Tavannes is of the latter kind."
+
+"Wait!  Wait and see!"  Madame cried in scorn.
+
+"I am waiting."
+
+"Yes!  And whereas if you had come to me I could have told her that about
+M. de Tignonville which would have surprised her, you will go on waiting
+and waiting and waiting until one fine day you'll wake up and find Madame
+gone, and--"
+
+"Then I'll take a wife I can whip!" he answered, with a look which
+apprised her how far she had carried it.  "But it will not be you, sweet
+cousin.  For I have no whip heavy enough for your case."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.  SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.
+
+
+We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a
+stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost
+to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings with a
+retiring foe.  But there are concessions which touch even a good woman's
+conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of a blow, and
+with that exception treated from hour to hour with rugged courtesy,
+shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.
+
+To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when a movement
+on her part might save men, women, and children from death, and a whole
+city from massacre--this was a line of conduct so craven, so selfish,
+that from the first she knew herself incapable of it.  But to take the
+only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that,
+the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not
+devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against
+punishment.  And the Countess was no fanatic.  No haze of bigotry
+glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than
+its own.  Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its
+ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay
+upon her to perform it, she saw it as he would see it, and saw herself as
+he would see her.
+
+True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of some might
+pass for punishment.  But he had saved her life where many had perished;
+and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic generosity.  In
+return for which she was to ruin him?  It was not hard to imagine what he
+would say of her, and of the reward with which she had requited him.
+
+She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the weltering sun in
+their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart the
+bracken which fringed the track.  Across breezy heaths and over downs,
+through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human creature
+fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes; riding in a
+world of their own, so remote, so different from the real world--from
+which they came and to which they must return--that she could have wept
+in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on
+creation.  The gaunt troopers riding at ease with swinging legs and
+swaying stirrups--and singing now a refrain from Ronsard, and now one of
+those verses of Marot's psalms which all the world had sung three decades
+before--wore their most lamb-like aspect.  Behind them Madame St. Lo
+chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which had not been brought, or
+planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently in the mode could be found at
+Angers.  And the other women talked and giggled, screamed when they came
+to fords, and made much of steep places, where the men must help them.  In
+time of war death's shadow covers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is
+out of mind.  Of all the troop whom the sinking sun left within sight of
+the lofty towers and vine-clad hills of Vendome, three only wore faces
+attuned to the cruel August week just ending; three only, like dark beads
+strung far apart on a gay nun's rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in
+their places.  The Countess was one--the others were the two men whose
+thoughts she filled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe's
+with sombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal's fraught with a gloomy
+speculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.
+
+He, moreover, as he rode, had other thoughts; dark ones, which did not
+touch her.  And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of her
+young lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out of the
+darkness which had suddenly whelmed her.  So that of the three only La
+Tribe was single-minded.
+
+This day they rode a long league after sunset, through a scattered oak-
+wood, where the rabbits sprang up under their horses' heads and the
+squirrels made angry faces at them from the lower branches.  Night was
+hard upon them when they reached the southern edge of the forest, and
+looked across the dusky open slopes to a distant light or two which
+marked where Vendome stood.
+
+"Another league," Count Hannibal muttered; and he bade the men light
+fires where they were, and unload the packhorses.  "'Tis pure and dry
+here," he said.  "Set a watch, Bigot, and let two men go down for water.
+I hear frogs below.  You do not fear to be moonstruck, Madame?"
+
+"I prefer this," she answered in a low voice.
+
+"Houses are for monks and nuns!" he rejoined heartily.  "Give me God's
+heaven."
+
+"The earth is His, but we deface it," she murmured, reverting to her
+thoughts, and unconscious that it was to him she spoke.
+
+He looked at her sharply, but the fire was not yet kindled; and in the
+gloaming her face was a pale blot undecipherable.  He stood a moment, but
+she did not speak again; and Madame St. Lo bustling up, he moved away to
+give an order.  By-and-by the fires burned up, and showed the pillared
+aisle in which they sat, small groups dotted here and there on the floor
+of Nature's cathedral.  Through the shadowy Gothic vaulting, the groining
+of many boughs which met overhead, a rare star twinkled, as through some
+clerestory window; and from the dell below rose in the night, now the
+monotonous chanting of the frogs, and now, as some great bull-frog took
+the note, a diapason worthy of a Brescian organ.  The darkness walled all
+in; the night was still; a falling caterpillar sounded.  Even the rude
+men at the farthest fire stilled their voices at times; awed, they knew
+not why, by the silence and vastness of the night.
+
+The Countess long remembered that vigil--for she lay late awake; the cool
+gloom, the faint wood-rustlings, the distant cry of fox or wolf, the soft
+glow of the expiring fires that at last left the world to darkness and
+the stars; above all, the silent wheeling of the planets, which spoke
+indeed of a supreme Ruler, but crushed the heart under a sense of its
+insignificance, and of the insignificance of all human revolutions.
+
+"Yet, I believe!" she cried, wrestling upwards, wrestling with herself.
+"Though I have seen what I have seen, yet I believe!"
+
+And though she had to bear what she had to bear, and do that from which
+her soul shrank!  The woman, indeed, within her continued to cry out
+against this tragedy ever renewed in her path, against this necessity for
+choosing evil, or good, ease for herself or life for others.  But the
+moving heavens, pointing onward to a time when good and evil alike should
+be past, strengthened a nature essentially noble; and before she slept no
+shame and no suffering seemed--for the moment at least--too great a price
+to pay for the lives of little children.  Love had been taken from her
+life; the pride which would fain answer generosity with generosity--that
+must go, too!
+
+She felt no otherwise when the day came, and the bustle of the start and
+the common round of the journey put to flight the ideals of the night.
+But things fell out in a manner she had not pictured.  They halted before
+noon on the north bank of the Loir, in a level meadow with lines of
+poplars running this way and that, and filling all the place with the
+soft shimmer of leaves.  Blue succory, tiny mirrors of the summer sky,
+flecked the long grass, and the women picked bunches of them, or, Italian
+fashion, twined the blossoms in their hair.  A road ran across the meadow
+to a ferry, but the ferryman, alarmed by the aspect of the party, had
+conveyed his boat to the other side and hidden himself.
+
+Presently Madame St. Lo espied the boat, clapped her hands and must have
+it.  The poplars threw no shade, the flies teased her, the life of a
+hermit--in a meadow--was no longer to her taste.
+
+"Let us go on the water!" she cried.  "Presently you will go to bathe,
+Monsieur, and leave us to grill!"
+
+"Two livres to the man who will fetch the boat!" Count Hannibal cried.
+
+In less than half a minute three men had thrown off their boots, and were
+swimming across, amid the laughter and shouts of their fellows.  In five
+minutes the boat was brought.
+
+It was not large and would hold no more than four. Tavannes' eye fell on
+Carlat.
+
+"You understand a boat," he said.  "Go with Madame St. Lo.  And you, M.
+La Tribe."
+
+"But you are coming?" Madame St. Lo cried, turning to the Countess.  "Oh,
+Madame," with a curtsey, "you are not?  You--"
+
+"Yes, I will come," the Countess answered.
+
+"I shall bathe a short distance up the stream," Count Hannibal said.  He
+took from his belt the packet of letters, and as Carlat held the boat for
+Madame St. Lo to enter, he gave it to the Countess, as he had given it to
+her yesterday.  "Have a care of it, Madame," he said in a low voice, "and
+do not let it pass out of your hands.  To lose it may be to lose my
+head."
+
+The colour ebbed from her cheeks.  In spite of herself her shaking hand
+put back the packet.  "Had you not better then--give it to Bigot?" she
+faltered.
+
+"He is bathing."
+
+"Let him bathe afterwards."
+
+"No," he answered almost harshly; he found a species of pleasure in
+showing her that, strange as their relations were, he trusted her.  "No;
+take it, Madame.  Only have a care of it."
+
+She took it then, hid it in her dress, and he turned away; and she turned
+towards the boat.  La Tribe stood beside the stern, holding it for her to
+enter, and as her fingers rested an instant on his arm their eyes met.
+His were alight, his arm even quivered; and she shuddered.
+
+She avoided looking at him a second time, and this was easy, since he
+took his seat in the bows beyond Carlat, who handled the oars.  Silently
+the boat glided out on the surface of the stream, and floated downwards,
+Carlat now and again touching an oar, and Madame St. Lo chattering gaily
+in a voice which carried far on the water.  Now it was a flowering rush
+she must have, now a green bough to shield her face from the sun's
+reflection; and now they must lie in some cool, shadowy pool under fern-
+clad banks, where the fish rose heavily, and the trickle of a rivulet
+fell down over stones.
+
+It was idyllic.  But not to the Countess.  Her face burned, her temples
+throbbed, her fingers gripped the side of the boat in the vain attempt to
+steady her pulses.  The packet within her dress scorched her.  The great
+city and its danger, Tavannes and his faith in her, the need of action,
+the irrevocableness of action hurried through her brain.  The knowledge
+that she must act now--or never--pressed upon her with distracting force.
+Her hand felt the packet, and fell again nerveless.
+
+"The sun has caught you, _ma mie_," Madame St. Lo said.  "You should ride
+in a mask as I do."
+
+"I have not one with me," she muttered, her eyes on the water.
+
+"And I but an old one.  But at Angers--"
+
+The Countess heard no more; on that word she caught La Tribe's eye.  He
+was beckoning to her behind Carlat's back, pointing imperiously to the
+water, making signs to her to drop the packet over the side.  When she
+did not obey--she felt sick and faint--she saw through a mist his brow
+grow dark.  He menaced her secretly.  And still the packet scorched her;
+and twice her hand went to it, and dropped again empty.
+
+On a sudden Madame St. Lo cried out.  The bank on one side of the stream
+was beginning to rise more boldly above the water, and at the head of the
+steep thus formed she had espied a late rosebush in bloom; nothing would
+now serve but she must land at once and plunder it.  The boat was put in
+therefore, she jumped ashore, and began to scale the bank.
+
+"Go with Madame!" La Tribe cried, roughly nudging Carlat in the back.  "Do
+you not see that she cannot climb the bank?  Up, man, up!"
+
+The Countess opened her mouth to cry "No!" but the word died half-born on
+her lips; and when the steward looked at her, uncertain what she had
+said, she nodded.
+
+"Yes, go!" she muttered.  She was pale.
+
+"Yes, man, go!" cried the minister, his eyes burning.  And he almost
+pushed the other out of the boat.
+
+The next second the craft floated from the bank, and began to drift
+downwards.  La Tribe waited until a tree interposed and hid them from the
+two whom they had left; then he leaned forward.
+
+"Now, Madame!" he cried imperiously.  "In God's name, now!"
+
+"Oh!" she cried.  "Wait!  Wait!  I want to think."
+
+"To think?"
+
+"He trusted me!" she wailed.  "He trusted me!  How can I do it?"
+Nevertheless, and even while she spoke, she drew forth the packet.
+
+"Heaven has given you the opportunity!"
+
+"If I could have stolen it!" she answered.
+
+"Fool!" he returned, rocking himself to and fro, and fairly beside
+himself with impatience.  "Why steal it?  It is in your hands!  You have
+it!  It is Heaven's own opportunity, it is God's opportunity given to
+you!"
+
+For he could not read her mind nor comprehend the scruple which held her
+hand.  He was single-minded.  He had but one aim, one object.  He saw the
+haggard faces of brave men hopeless; he heard the dying cries of women
+and children.  Such an opportunity of saving God's elect, of redeeming
+the innocent, was in his eyes a gift from Heaven.  And having these
+thoughts and seeing her hesitate--hesitate when every movement caused him
+agony, so imperative was haste, so precious the opportunity--he could
+bear the suspense no longer.  When she did not answer he stooped forward,
+until his knees touched the thwart on which Carlat had sat; then, without
+a word, he flung himself forward, and, with one hand far extended,
+grasped the packet.
+
+Had he not moved, she would have done his will; almost certainly she
+would have done it.  But, thus attacked, she resisted instinctively; she
+clung to the letters.
+
+"No!" she cried.  "No!  Let go, Monsieur!"  And she tried to drag the
+packet from him.
+
+"Give it me!"
+
+"Let go, Monsieur!  Do you hear?" she repeated.  And, with a vigorous
+jerk, she forced it from him--he had caught it by the edge only--and held
+it behind her.  "Go back, and--"
+
+"Give it me!" he panted.
+
+"I will not!"
+
+"Then throw it overboard!"
+
+"I will not!" she cried again, though his face, dark with passion, glared
+into hers, and it was clear that the man, possessed by one idea only, was
+no longer master of himself.  "Go back to your place!"
+
+"Give it me," he gasped, "or I will upset the boat!"  And, seizing her by
+the shoulder, he reached over her, striving to take hold of the packet
+which she held behind her.  The boat rocked; and, as much in rage as
+fear, she screamed.
+
+A cry uttered wholly in rage answered hers; it came from Carlat.  La
+Tribe, however, whose whole mind was fixed on the packet, did not heed,
+nor would have heeded, the steward.  But the next moment a second cry,
+fierce as that of a wild beast, clove the air from the lower and farther
+bank; and the Huguenot, recognizing Count Hannibal's voice, involuntarily
+desisted and stood erect.  A moment the boat rocked perilously under him;
+then--for unheeded it had been drifting that way--it softly touched the
+bank on which Carlat stood staring and aghast.
+
+La Tribe's chance was gone; he saw that the steward must reach him before
+he could succeed in a second attempt.  On the other hand, the undergrowth
+on the bank was thick, he could touch it with his hand, and if he fled at
+once he might escape.
+
+He hung an instant irresolute; then, with a look which went to the
+Countess's heart, he sprang ashore, plunged among the alders, and in a
+moment was gone.
+
+"After him!  After him!" thundered Count Hannibal.  "After him, man!" and
+Carlat, stumbling down the steep slope and through the rough briars, did
+his best to obey.  But in vain.  Before he reached the water's edge, the
+noise of the fugitive's retreat had grown faint.  A few seconds and it
+died away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.  PLAYING WITH FIRE.
+
+
+The impulse of La Tribe's foot as he landed had driven the boat into the
+stream.  It drifted slowly downward, and if naught intervened, would take
+the ground on Count Hannibal's side, a hundred and fifty yards below him.
+He saw this, and walked along the bank, keeping pace with it, while the
+Countess sat motionless, crouching in the stern of the craft, her fingers
+strained about the fatal packet.  The slow glide of the boat, as almost
+imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the stillness of the mirror-
+like surface on which it moved, leaving only the faintest ripple behind
+it; the silence--for under the influence of emotion Count Hannibal too
+was mute--all were in tremendous contrast with the storm which raged in
+her breast.
+
+Should she--should she even now, with his eyes on her, drop the letters
+over the side?  It needed but a movement.  She had only to extend her
+hand, to relax the tension of her fingers, and the deed was done.  It
+needed only that; but the golden sands of opportunity were running
+out--were running out fast.  Slowly and more slowly, silently and more
+silently, the boat slid in towards the bank on which he stood, and still
+she hesitated.  The stillness, and the waiting figure, and the watching
+eyes now but a few feet distant, weighed on her and seemed to paralyze
+her will.  A foot, another foot!  A moment and it would be too late, the
+last of the sands would have run out.  The bow of the boat rustled softly
+through the rushes; it kissed the bank.  And her hand still held the
+letters.
+
+"You are not hurt?" he asked curtly.  "The scoundrel might have drowned
+you.  Was he mad?"
+
+She was silent.  He held out his hand, and she gave him the packet.
+
+"I owe you much," he said, a ring of gaiety, almost of triumph, in his
+tone.  "More than you guess, Madame.  God made you for a soldier's wife,
+and a mother of soldiers.  What?  You are not well, I am afraid?"
+
+"If I could sit down a minute," she faltered.  She was swaying on her
+feet.
+
+He supported her across the belt of meadow which fringed the bank, and
+made her recline against a tree.  Then as his men began to come up--for
+the alarm had reached them--he would have sent two of them in the boat to
+fetch Madame St. Lo to her.  But she would not let him.
+
+"Your maid, then?" he said.
+
+"No, Monsieur, I need only to be alone a little!  Only to be alone," she
+repeated, her face averted; and believing this he sent the men away, and,
+taking the boat himself, he crossed over, took in Madame St. Lo and
+Carlat, and rowed them to the ferry.  Here the wildest rumours were
+current.  One held that the Huguenot had gone out of his senses; another,
+that he had watched for this opportunity of avenging his brethren; a
+third, that his intention had been to carry off the Countess and hold her
+to ransom.  Only Tavannes himself, from his position on the farther bank,
+had seen the packet of letters, and the hand which withheld them; and he
+said nothing.  Nay, when some of the men would have crossed to search for
+the fugitive, he forbade them, he scarcely knew why, save that it might
+please her; and when the women would have hurried to join her and hear
+the tale from her lips he forbade them also.
+
+"She wishes to be alone," he said curtly.
+
+"Alone?" Madame St. Lo cried, in a fever of curiosity.  "You'll find her
+dead, or worse!  What?  Leave a woman alone after such a fright as that!"
+
+"She wishes it."
+
+Madame laughed cynically; and the laugh brought a tinge of colour to his
+brow.
+
+"Oh, does she?" she sneered.  "Then I understand!  Have a care, have a
+care, or one of these days, Monsieur, when you leave her alone, you'll
+find them together!"
+
+"Be silent!"
+
+"With pleasure," she returned.  "Only when it happens don't say that you
+were not warned.  You think that she does not hear from him--"
+
+"How can she hear?"  The words were wrung from him.
+
+Madame St. Lo's contempt passed all limits.  "How can she!" she retorted.
+"You trail a woman across France, and let her sit by herself, and lie by
+herself, and all but drown by herself, and you ask how she hears from her
+lover?  You leave her old servants about her, and you ask how she
+communicates with him?"
+
+"You know nothing!" he snarled.
+
+"I know this," she retorted.  "I saw her sitting this morning, and
+smiling and weeping at the same time!  Was she thinking of you, Monsieur?
+Or of him?  She was looking at the hills through tears; a blue mist hung
+over them, and I'll wager she saw some one's eyes gazing and some one's
+hand beckoning out of the blue!"
+
+"Curse you!" he cried, tormented in spite of himself.  "You love to make
+mischief!"
+
+"No!" she answered swiftly.  "For 'twas not I made the match.  But go
+your way, go your way, Monsieur, and see what kind of a welcome you'll
+get!"
+
+"I will," Count Hannibal growled.  And he started along the bank to
+rejoin his wife.
+
+The light in his eyes had died down.  Yet would they have been more
+sombre, and his face more harsh, had he known the mind of the woman to
+whom he was hastening.  The Countess had begged to be left alone; alone,
+she found the solitude she had craved a cruel gift.  She had saved the
+packet.  She had fulfilled her trust.  But only to experience, the moment
+the deed was done, the full poignancy of remorse.  Before the act, while
+the choice had lain with her, the betrayal of her husband had loomed
+large; now she saw that to treat him as she had treated him was the true
+betrayal, and that even for his own sake, and to save him from a fearful
+sin, it had become her to destroy the letters.
+
+Now, it was no longer her duty to him which loomed large, but her duty to
+the innocent, to the victims of the massacre which she might have stayed,
+to the people of her faith whom she had abandoned, to the women and
+children whose death-warrant she had preserved.  Now, she perceived that
+a part more divine had never fallen to woman, nor a responsibility so
+heavy been laid upon woman.  Nor guilt more dread!
+
+She writhed in misery, thinking of it.  What had she done?  She could
+hear afar off the sounds of the camp; an occasional outcry, a snatch of
+laughter.  And the cry and the laughter rang in her ears, a bitter
+mockery.  This summer camp, to what was it the prelude?  This forbearance
+on her husband's part, in what would it end?  Were not the one and the
+other cruel make-believes?  Two days, and the men who laughed beside the
+water would slay and torture with equal zest.  A little, and the husband
+who now chose to be generous would show himself in his true colours.  And
+it was for the sake of such as these that she had played the coward.  That
+she had laid up for herself endless remorse.  That henceforth the cries
+of the innocent would haunt her dreams.
+
+Racked by such thoughts she did not hear his step, and it was his shadow
+falling across her feet which first warned her of his presence.  She
+looked up, saw him, and involuntarily recoiled.  Then, seeing the change
+in his face--
+
+"Oh! Monsieur," she stammered, affrighted, her hand pressed to her side,
+"I ask your pardon!  You startled me!"
+
+"So it seems," he answered.  And he stood over her regarding her dryly.
+
+"I am not quite--myself yet," she murmured.  His look told her that her
+start had betrayed her feelings.
+
+Alas! the plan of taking a woman by force has drawbacks, and among others
+this one: that he must be a sanguine husband who deems her heart his, and
+a husband without jealousy, whose suspicions are not aroused by the
+faintest flush or the lightest word.  He knows that she is his
+unwillingly, a victim, not a mistress; and behind every bush beside the
+road and behind every mask in the crowd he espies a rival.
+
+Moreover, where women are in question, who is always strong?  Or who can
+say how long he will pursue this plan or that?  A man of sternest temper,
+Count Hannibal had set out on a path of conduct carefully and
+deliberately chosen; knowing--and he still knew--that if he abandoned it
+he had little to hope, if the less to fear.  But the proof of fidelity
+which the Countess had just given him had blown to a white heat the
+smouldering flame in his heart, and Madame St. Lo's gibes, which should
+have fallen as cold water alike on his hopes and his passion, had but fed
+the desire to know the best.  For all that, he might not have spoken now,
+if he had not caught her look of affright; strange as it sounds, that
+look, which of all things should have silenced him and warned him that
+the time was not yet, stung him out of patience.  Suddenly the man in him
+carried him away.
+
+"You still fear me, then?" he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural.  "Is
+it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me, Madame?
+Tell me, I beg, for--"
+
+"For neither!" she said, trembling.  His eyes, hot and passionate, were
+on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow.  "For neither!  I do not
+hate you, Monsieur!"
+
+"You fear me then?  I am right in that."
+
+"I fear--that which you carry with you," she stammered, speaking on
+impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.
+
+He started, and his expression changed.  "So?" he exclaimed.  "So?  You
+know what I carry, do you?  And from whom?  From whom," he continued in a
+tone of menace, "if you please, did you get that knowledge?"
+
+"From M. La Tribe," she muttered.  She had not meant to tell him.  Why
+had she told him?
+
+He nodded.  "I might have known it," he said.  "I more than suspected it.
+Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the letters.
+But"--he paused and laughed harshly--"it was out of no love for me you
+saved them.  That too I know."
+
+She did not answer or protest; and when he had waited a moment in vain
+expectation of her protest, a cruel look crept into his eyes.
+
+"Madame," he said slowly, "do you never reflect that you may push the
+part you play too far?  That the patience, even of the worst of men, does
+not endure for ever?"
+
+"I have your word!" she answered.
+
+"And you do not fear?"
+
+"I have your word," she repeated.  And now she looked him bravely in the
+face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.
+
+The lines of his mouth hardened as he met her look.  "And what have I of
+yours?" he said in a low voice.  "What have I of yours?"
+
+Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered.
+
+"My gratitude," she murmured, with an upward look that prayed for pity.
+"God knows, Monsieur, you have that!"
+
+"God knows I do not want it!" he answered.  And he laughed derisively.
+"Your gratitude!"  And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely.  "Your
+gratitude!"  Then for a minute--for so long a time that she began to
+wonder and to quake--he was silent.  At last, "A fig for your gratitude,"
+he said.  "I want your love!  I suppose--cold as you are, and a
+Huguenot--you can love like other women!"
+
+It was the first, the very first time he had used the word to her; and
+though it fell from his lips like a threat, though he used it as a man
+presents a pistol, she flushed anew from throat to brow.  But she did not
+quail.
+
+"It is not mine to give," she said.
+
+"It is his?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," she answered, wondering at her courage, at her audacity,
+her madness.  "It is his."
+
+"And it cannot be mine--at any time?"
+
+She shook her head, trembling.
+
+"Never?"  And, suddenly reaching forward, he gripped her wrist in an iron
+grasp.  There was passion in his tone.  His eyes burned her.
+
+Whether it was that set her on another track, or pure despair, or the cry
+in her ears of little children and of helpless women, something in a
+moment inspired her, flashed in her eyes and altered her voice.  She
+raised her head and looked him firmly in the face.
+
+"What," she said, "do you mean by love?"
+
+"You!" he answered brutally.
+
+"Then--it may be, Monsieur," she returned.  "There is a way if you will."
+
+"A way!"
+
+"If you will!"
+
+As she spoke she rose slowly to her feet; for in his surprise he had
+released her wrist.  He rose with her, and they stood confronting one
+another on the strip of grass between the river and the poplars.
+
+"If I will?"  His form seemed to dilate, his eyes devoured her.  "If I
+will?"
+
+"Yes," she replied.  "If you will give me the letters that are in your
+belt, the packet which I saved to-day--that I may destroy them--I will be
+yours freely and willingly."
+
+He drew a deep breath, still devouring her with his eyes.
+
+"You mean it?" he said at last.
+
+"I do."  She looked him in the face as she spoke, and her cheeks were
+white, not red.  "Only--the letters!  Give me the letters."
+
+"And for them you will give me your love?"
+
+Her eyes flickered, and involuntarily she shivered.  A faint blush rose
+and dyed her cheeks.
+
+"Only God can give love," she said, her tone low.
+
+"And yours is given?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To another?"
+
+"I have said it."
+
+"It is his.  And yet for these letters--"
+
+"For these lives!" she cried proudly.
+
+"You will give yourself?"
+
+"I swear it," she answered, "if you will give them to me!  If you will
+give them to me," she repeated.  And she held out her hands; her face,
+full of passion, was bright with a strange light.  A close observer might
+have thought her distraught; still excited by the struggle in the boat,
+and barely mistress of herself.
+
+But the man whom she tempted, the man who held her price at his belt,
+after one searching look at her turned from her; perhaps because he could
+not trust himself to gaze on her.  Count Hannibal walked a dozen paces
+from her and returned, and again a dozen paces and returned; and again a
+third time, with something fierce and passionate in his gait.  At last he
+stopped before her.
+
+"You have nothing to offer for them," he said, in a cold, hard tone.
+"Nothing that is not mine already, nothing that is not my right, nothing
+that I cannot take at my will.  My word?" he continued, seeing her about
+to interrupt him.  "True, Madame, you have it, you had it.  But why need
+I keep my word to you, who tempt me to break my word to the King?"
+
+She made a weak gesture with her hands.  Her head had sunk on her
+breast--she seemed dazed by the shock of his contempt, dazed by his
+reception of her offer.
+
+"You saved the letters?" he continued, interpreting her action.  "True,
+but the letters are mine, and that which you offer for them is mine also.
+You have nothing to offer.  For the rest, Madame," he went on, eyeing her
+cynically, "you surprise me!  You, whose modesty and virtue are so great,
+would corrupt your husband, would sell yourself, would dishonour the love
+of which you boast so loudly, the love that only God gives!"  He laughed
+derisively as he quoted her words.  "Ay, and, after showing at how low a
+price you hold yourself, you still look, I doubt not, to me to respect
+you, and to keep my word.  Madame!" in a terrible voice, "do not play
+with fire!  You saved my letters, it is true!  And for that, for this
+time, you shall go free, if God will help me to let you go!  But tempt me
+not!  Tempt me not!" he repeated, turning from her and turning back again
+with a gesture of despair, as if he mistrusted the strength of the
+restraint which he put upon himself.  "I am no more than other men!
+Perhaps I am less.  And you--you who prate of love, and know not what
+love is--could love! could love!"
+
+He stopped on that word as if the word choked him--stopped, struggling
+with his passion.  At last, with a half-stifled oath, he flung away from
+her, halted and hung a moment, then, with a swing of rage, went off again
+violently.  His feet as he strode along the river-bank trampled the
+flowers, and slew the pale water forget-me-not, which grew among the
+grasses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.  A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.
+
+
+La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal
+hot on his heels.  He dared not pause even to listen.  The underwood
+tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and
+blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked
+himself up groaning.  But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the
+briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself into
+covert.  And for the time he was naught but a hunted beast.  With elbows
+pinned to his sides, or with hands extended to ward off the boughs, with
+bursting lungs and crimson face, he plunged through the tangle, now
+slipping downwards, now leaping upwards, now all but prostrate, now
+breasting a mass of thorns.  On and on he ran, until he came to the verge
+of the wood, saw before him an open meadow devoid of shelter or hiding-
+place, and with a groan of despair cast himself flat.  He listened.  How
+far were they behind him?
+
+He heard nothing--nothing, save the common noises of the wood, the angry
+chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh
+notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow.  The hum of
+bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow,
+for he had lost his cap.  But behind him--nothing.  Already the stillness
+of the wood had closed upon his track.
+
+He was not the less panic-stricken.  He supposed that Tavannes' people
+were getting to horse, and calculated that, if they surrounded and beat
+the wood, he must be taken.  At the thought, though he had barely got his
+breath, he rose, and keeping within the coppice crawled down the slope
+towards the river.  Gently, when he reached it, he slipped into the
+water, and stooping below the level of the bank, his head and shoulders
+hidden by the bushes, he waded down stream until he had put another
+hundred and fifty yards between himself and pursuit.  Then he paused and
+listened.  Still he heard nothing, and he waded on again, until the water
+grew deep.  At this point he marked a little below him a clump of trees
+on the farther side; and reflecting that that side--if he could reach it
+unseen--would be less suspect, he swam across, aiming for a thorn bush
+which grew low to the water.  Under its shelter he crawled out, and,
+worming himself like a snake across the few yards of grass which
+intervened, he stood at length within the shadow of the trees.  A moment
+he paused to shake himself, and then, remembering that he was still
+within a mile of the camp, he set off, now walking, and now running in
+the direction of the hills which his party had crossed that morning.
+
+For a time he hurried on, thinking only of escape.  But when he had
+covered a mile or two, and escape seemed probable, there began to mingle
+with his thankfulness a bitter--a something which grew more bitter with
+each moment.  Why had he fled and left the work undone?  Why had he given
+way to unworthy fear, when the letters were within his grasp?  True, if
+he had lingered a few seconds longer, he would have failed to make good
+his escape; but what of that if in those seconds he had destroyed the
+letters, he had saved Angers, he had saved his brethren?  Alas! he had
+played the coward.  The terror of Tavannes' voice had unmanned him.  He
+had saved himself and left the flock to perish; he, whom God had set
+apart by many and great signs for this work!
+
+He had commonly courage enough.  He could have died at the stake for his
+convictions.  But he had not the presence of mind which is proof against
+a shock, nor the cool judgment which, in the face of death, sees to the
+end of two roads.  He was no coward, but now he deemed himself one, and
+in an agony of remorse he flung himself on his face in the long grass.  He
+had known trials and temptations, but hitherto he had held himself erect;
+now, like Peter, he had betrayed his Lord.
+
+He lay an hour groaning in the misery of his heart, and then he fell on
+the text "Thou art Peter, and on this rock--" and he sat up.  Peter had
+betrayed his trust through cowardice--as he had.  But Peter had not been
+held unworthy.  Might it not be so with him?  He rose to his feet, a new
+light in his eyes.  He would return!  He would return, and at all costs,
+even at the cost of surrendering himself, he would obtain access to the
+letters.  And then--not the fear of Count Hannibal, not the fear of
+instant death, should turn him from his duty.
+
+He had cast himself down in a woodland glade which lay near the path
+along which he had ridden that morning.  But the mental conflict from
+which he rose had shaken him so violently that he could not recall the
+side on which he had entered the clearing, and he turned himself about,
+endeavouring to remember.  At that moment the light jingle of a bridle
+struck his ear; he caught through the green bushes the flash and sparkle
+of harness.  They had tracked him then, they were here!  So had he clear
+proof that this second chance was to be his.  In a happy fervour he stood
+forward where the pursuers could not fail to see him.
+
+Or so he thought.  Yet the first horseman, riding carelessly with his
+face averted and his feet dangling, would have gone by and seen nothing
+if his horse, more watchful, had not shied.  The man turned then; and for
+a moment the two stared at one another between the pricked ears of the
+horse.  At last--
+
+"M. de Tignonville!" the minister ejaculated.
+
+"La Tribe!"
+
+"It is truly you?"
+
+"Well--I think so," the young man answered.
+
+The minister lifted up his eyes and seemed to call the trees and the
+clouds and the birds to witness.
+
+"Now," he cried, "I know that I am chosen!  And that we were instruments
+to do this thing from the day when the hen saved us in the haycart in
+Paris!  Now I know that all is forgiven and all is ordained, and that the
+faithful of Angers shall to-morrow live and not die!"  And with a face
+radiant, yet solemn, he walked to the young man's stirrup.
+
+An instant Tignonville looked sharply before him.  "How far ahead are
+they?" he asked.  His tone, hard and matter-of-fact, was little in
+harmony with the other's enthusiasm.
+
+"They are resting a league before you, at the ferry.  You are in pursuit
+of them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not alone?"
+
+"No."  The young man's look as he spoke was grim.  "I have five behind
+me--of your kidney, M. la Tribe.  They are from the Arsenal.  They have
+lost one his wife, and one his son.  The three others--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Sweethearts," Tignonville answered dryly.  And he cast a singular look
+at the minister.
+
+But La Tribe's mind was so full of one matter, he could think only of
+that.
+
+"How did you hear of the letters?" he asked.
+
+"The letters?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I do not know what you mean."
+
+La Tribe stared.  "Then why are you following him?" he asked.
+
+"Why?" Tignonville echoed, a look of hate darkening his face.  "Do you
+ask why we follow--"  But on the name he seemed to choke and was silent.
+
+By this time his men had come up, and one answered for him.
+
+"Why are we following Hannibal de Tavannes?" he said sternly.  "To do to
+him as he has done to us!  To rob him as he has robbed us--of more than
+gold!  To kill him as he has killed ours, foully and by surprise!  In his
+bed if we can!  In the arms of his wife if God wills it!"
+
+The speaker's face was haggard from brooding and lack of sleep, but his
+eyes glowed and burned, as his fellows growled assent.
+
+"'Tis simple why we follow," a second put in.  "Is there a man of our
+faith who will not, when he hears the tale, rise up and stab the nearest
+of this black brood--though it be his brother?  If so, God's curse on
+him!"
+
+"Amen!  Amen!"
+
+"So, and so only," cried the first, "shall there be faith in our land!
+And our children, our little maids, shall lie safe in their beds!"
+
+"Amen!  Amen!"
+
+The speaker's chin sank on his breast, and with his last word the light
+died out of his eyes.  La Tribe looked at him curiously, then at the
+others.  Last of all at Tignonville, on whose face he fancied that he
+surprised a faint smile.  Yet Tignonville's tone when he spoke was grave
+enough.
+
+"You have heard," he said.  "Do you blame us?"
+
+"I cannot," the minister answered, shivering.  "I cannot."  He had been
+for a while beyond the range of these feelings; and in the greenwood,
+under God's heaven, with the sunshine about him, they jarred on him.  Yet
+he could not blame men who had suffered as these had suffered; who were
+maddened, as these were maddened, by the gravest wrongs which it is
+possible for one man to inflict on another.  "I dare not," he continued
+sorrowfully.  "But in God's name I offer you a higher and a nobler
+errand."
+
+"We need none," Tignonville muttered impatiently.
+
+"Yet many others need you," La Tribe answered in a tone of rebuke.  "You
+are not aware that the man you follow bears a packet from the King for
+the hands of the magistrates of Angers?"
+
+"Ha!  Does he?"
+
+"Bidding them do at Angers as his Majesty has done in Paris?"
+
+The men broke into cries of execration.  "But he shall not see Angers!"
+they swore.  "The blood that he has shed shall choke him by the way!  And
+as he would do to others it shall be done to him."
+
+La Tribe shuddered as he listened, as he looked.  Try as he would, the
+thirst of these men for vengeance appalled him.
+
+"How?" he said.  "He has a score and more with him and you are only six."
+
+"Seven now," Tignonville answered with a smile.
+
+"True, but--"
+
+"And he lies to-night at La Fleche?  That is so?"
+
+"It was his intention this morning."
+
+"At the old King's Inn at the meeting of the great roads?"
+
+"It was mentioned," La Tribe admitted, with a reluctance he did not
+comprehend.  "But if the night be fair he is as like as not to lie in the
+fields."
+
+One of the men pointed to the sky.  A dark bank of cloud fresh risen from
+the ocean, and big with tempest, hung low in the west.
+
+"See!  God will deliver him into our hands!" he cried.
+
+Tignonville nodded.  "If he lie there," he said, "He will."  And then to
+one of his followers, as he dismounted, "Do you ride on," he said, "and
+stand guard that we be not surprised.  And do you, Perrot, tell Monsieur.
+Perrot here, as God wills it," he added, with the faint smile which did
+not escape the minister's eye, "married his wife from the great inn at La
+Fleche, and he knows the place."
+
+"None better," the man growled.  He was a sullen, brooding knave, whose
+eyes when he looked up surprised by their savage fire.
+
+La Tribe shook his head.  "I know it, too," he said.  "'Tis strong as a
+fortress, with a walled court, and all the windows look inwards.  The
+gates are closed an hour after sunset, no matter who is without.  If you
+think, M. de Tignonville, to take him there--"
+
+"Patience, Monsieur, you have not heard me," Perrot interposed.  "I know
+it after another fashion.  Do you remember a rill of water which runs
+through the great yard and the stables?"
+
+La Tribe nodded.
+
+"Grated with iron at either end and no passage for so much as a dog?  You
+do?  Well, Monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water passes
+under the wall is a culvert, a man's height in length.  In it is a stone,
+one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a strong man
+can remove--and the man is in!"
+
+"Ay, in!  But where?" La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
+
+"Well said, Monsieur, where?" Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph.
+"There lies the point.  In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a
+snorer on every truss?  No, but in a fairway between two stables where
+the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel
+deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a
+rope and a bucket.  The rooms above are the best in the house, four in
+one row, opening all on the gallery; which was uncovered, in the common
+fashion until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing that way to Nantes, two years
+back, found the chambers draughty; and that end of the gallery was closed
+in against her return.  Now, Monsieur, he and his Madame will lie there;
+and he will feel safe, for there is but one way to those four
+rooms--through the door which shuts off the covered gallery from the open
+part.  But--" he glanced up an instant and La Tribe caught the
+smouldering fire in his eyes--"we shall not go in by the door."
+
+"The bucket rises through a trap?"
+
+"In the gallery?  To be sure, monsieur.  In the corner beyond the fourth
+door.  There shall he fall into the pit which he dug for others, and the
+evil that he planned rebound on his own head!"
+
+La Tribe was silent.
+
+"What think you of it?" Tignonville asked.
+
+"That it is cleverly planned," the minister answered.
+
+"No more than that?"
+
+"No more until I have eaten."
+
+"Get him something!" Tignonville replied in a surly tone.  "And we may as
+well eat, ourselves.  Lead the horses into the wood.  And do you, Perrot,
+call Tuez-les-Moines, who is forward.  Two hours' riding should bring us
+to La Fleche.  We need not leave here, therefore, until the sun is low.
+To dinner!  To dinner!"
+
+Probably he did not feel the indifference he affected, for his face as he
+ate grew darker, and from time to time he shot a glance, barbed with
+suspicion, at the minister.  La Tribe on his side remained silent,
+although the men ate apart.  He was in doubt, indeed, as to his own
+feelings.  His instinct and his reason were at odds.  Through all,
+however, a single purpose, the rescue of Angers, held good, and gradually
+other things fell into their places.  When the meal was at an end, and
+Tignonville challenged him, he was ready.
+
+"Your enthusiasm seems to have waned," the younger man said with a sneer,
+"since we met, monsieur!  May I ask now if you find any fault with the
+plan?"
+
+"With the plan, none."
+
+"If it was Providence brought us together, was it not Providence
+furnished me with Perrot who knows La Fleche?  If it was Providence
+brought the danger of the faithful in Angers to your knowledge, was it
+not Providence set us on the road--without whom you had been powerless?"
+
+"I believe it!"
+
+"Then, in His name, what is the matter?" Tignonville rejoined with a
+passion of which the other's manner seemed an inadequate cause.  "What
+will you!  What is it?"
+
+"I would take your place," La Tribe answered quietly.
+
+"My place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What, are we too many?"
+
+"We are enough without you, M. Tignonville," the minister answered.
+"These men, who have wrongs to avenge, God will justify them."
+
+Tignonville's eyes sparkled with anger.  "And have I no wrongs to
+avenge?" he cried.  "Is it nothing to lose my mistress, to be robbed of
+my wife, to see the woman I love dragged off to be a slave and a toy?  Are
+these no wrongs?"
+
+"He spared your life, if he did not save it," the minister said solemnly.
+"And hers.  And her servants."
+
+"To suit himself."
+
+La Tribe spread out his hands.
+
+"To suit himself!  And for that you wish him to go free?" Tignonville
+cried in a voice half-choked with rage.  "Do you know that this man, and
+this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and when
+even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people?  After that
+is he to go free?"
+
+"At your hands," La Tribe answered quietly.  "You alone of our people
+must not pursue him."  He would have added more, but Tignonville would
+not listen.
+
+Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let hatred
+eat away his more generous instincts.  Vain and conceited, he fancied
+that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the wound in
+his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the downfall of
+his enemy.  Instant pursuit, instant vengeance--only these, he fancied,
+could restore him in his fellows' eyes.
+
+In his heart he knew what would become him better.  But vanity is a
+potent motive: and his conscience, even when supported by La Tribe,
+struggled but weakly.  From neither would he hear more.
+
+"You have travelled with him, until you side with him!" he cried
+violently.  "Have a care, monsieur, have a care, lest we think you
+papist!"  And walking over to the men, he bade them saddle; adding a sour
+word which turned their eyes, in no friendly gaze, on the minister.
+
+After that La Tribe said no more.  Of what use would it have been?
+
+But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which
+the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the
+business waxed.  The summer lightning which presently began to play
+across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which
+and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and
+these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise
+towards which they were set.  Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's
+mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance
+through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the
+slaughter in the sleeping-chamber.  And either because he had lived for
+days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had
+addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.
+
+In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man,
+fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his
+eyes.  And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark
+of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St.
+Agnes's Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best
+Catholic of them all, "Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!"  Nay, some such
+words did pass his lips.
+
+For the man before him turned halfway in his saddle.  "What?" he asked.
+
+But the Huguenot did not explain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.  AT THE KING'S INN.
+
+
+The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber.  She had writhed
+since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer.
+The slow declension of the day, the evening light, the signs of coming
+tempest which had driven her company to the shelter of the inn at the
+crossroads, all had racked her, by reminding her that the hours were
+flying, and that soon the fault she had committed would be irreparable.
+One impulsive attempt to redeem it she had made; but it had failed, and,
+by rendering her suspect, had made reparation more difficult.  Still, by
+daylight it had seemed possible to rest content with the trial made; not
+so now, when night had fallen, and the cries of little children and the
+haggard eyes of mothers peopled the darkness of her chamber.  She sat up,
+and listened with throbbing temples.
+
+To shut out the lightning which played at intervals across the heavens,
+Madame St. Lo, who shared the room, had covered the window with a cloak;
+and the place was dark.  To exclude the dull roll of the thunder was less
+easy, for the night was oppressively hot, and behind the cloak the
+casement was open.  Gradually, too, another sound, the hissing fall of
+heavy rain, began to make itself heard, and to mingle with the regular
+breathing which proved that Madame St. Lo slept.
+
+Assured of this fact, the Countess presently heaved a sigh, and slipped
+from the bed.  She groped in the darkness for her cloak, found it, and
+donned it over her night gear.  Then, taking her bearings by her bed,
+which stood with its head to the window and its foot to the entrance, she
+felt her way across the floor to the door, and after passing her hands a
+dozen times over every part of it, she found the latch, and raised it.
+The door creaked, as she pulled it open, and she stood arrested; but the
+sound went no farther, for the roofed gallery outside, which looked by
+two windows on the courtyard, was full of outdoor noises, the rushing of
+rain and the running of spouts and eaves.  One of the windows stood wide,
+admitting the rain and wind, and as she paused, holding the door open,
+the draught blew the cloak from her.  She stepped out quickly and shut
+the door behind her.  On her left was the blind end of the passage; she
+turned to the right.  She took one step into the darkness and stood
+motionless.  Beside her, within a few feet of her, some one had moved,
+with a dull sound as of a boot on wood; a sound so near her that she held
+her breath, and pressed herself against the wall.
+
+She listened.  Perhaps some of the servants--it was a common usage--had
+made their beds on the floor.  Perhaps one of the women had stirred in
+the room against the wall of which she crouched.  Perhaps--but, even
+while she reassured herself, the sound rose anew at her feet.
+
+Fortunately at the same instant the glare of the lightning flooded all,
+and showed the passage, and showed it empty.  It lit up the row of doors
+on her right and the small windows on her left, and discovered facing her
+the door which shut off the rest of the house.  She could have
+thanked--nay, she did thank God for that light.  If the sound she had
+heard recurred she did not hear it; for, as the thunder which followed
+hard on the flash crashed overhead and rolled heavily eastwards, she felt
+her way boldly along the passage, touching first one door, and then a
+second, and then a third.
+
+She groped for the latch of the last, and found it, but, with her hand on
+it, paused.  In order to summon up her courage, she strove to hear again
+the cries of misery and to see again the haggard eyes which had driven
+her hither.  And if she did not wholly succeed, other reflections came to
+her aid.  This storm, which covered all smaller noises, and opened, now
+and again, God's lantern for her use, did it not prove that He was on her
+side, and that she might count on His protection?  The thought at least
+was timely, and with a better heart she gathered her wits.  Waiting until
+the thunder burst over her head, she opened the door, slid within it, and
+closed it.  She would fain have left it ajar, that in case of need she
+might escape the more easily.  But the wind, which beat into the passage
+through the open window, rendered the precaution too perilous.
+
+She went forward two paces into the room, and as the roll of the thunder
+died away she stooped forward and listened with painful intensity for the
+sound of Count Hannibal's breathing.  But the window was open, and the
+hiss of the rain persisted; she could hear nothing through it, and
+fearfully she took another step forward.  The window should be before
+her; the bed in the corner to the left.  But nothing of either could she
+make out.  She must wait for the lightning.
+
+It came, and for a second or more the room shone.  The window, the low
+truckle-bed, the sleeper, she saw all with dazzling clearness, and before
+the flash had well passed she was crouching low, with the hood of her
+cloak dragged about her face.  For the glare had revealed Count Hannibal;
+but not asleep!  He lay on his side, his face towards her; lay with open
+eyes, staring at her.
+
+Or had the light tricked her?  The light must have tricked her, for in
+the interval between the flash and the thunder, while she crouched
+quaking, he did not move or call.  The light must have deceived her.  She
+felt so certain of it that she found courage to remain where she was
+until another flash came and showed him sleeping with closed eyes.
+
+She drew a breath of relief at that, and rose slowly to her feet.  But
+she dared not go forward until a third flash had confirmed the second.
+Then, while the thunder burst overhead and rolled away, she crept on
+until she stood beside the pillow, and, stooping, could hear the
+sleeper's breathing.
+
+Alas! the worst remained to be done.  The packet, she was sure of it, lay
+under his pillow.  How was she to find it, how remove it without rousing
+him?  A touch might awaken him.  And yet, if she would not return empty-
+handed, if she would not go back to the harrowing thoughts which had
+tortured her through the long hours of the day, it must be done, and done
+now.
+
+She knew this, yet she hung irresolute a while, blenching before the
+manual act, listening to the persistent rush and downpour of the rain.
+Then a second time she drew courage from the storm.  How timely had it
+broken.  How signally had it aided her!  How slight had been her chance
+without it!  And so at last, resolutely but with a deft touch, she slid
+her fingers between the pillow and the bed, slightly pressing down the
+latter with her other hand.  For an instant she fancied that the
+sleeper's breathing stopped, and her heart gave a great bound.  But the
+breathing went on the next instant--if it had stopped--and dreading the
+return of the lightning, shrinking from being revealed so near him, and
+in that act--for which the darkness seemed more fitting--she groped
+farther, and touched something.  Then, as her fingers closed upon it and
+grasped it, and his breath rose hot to her burning cheek, she knew that
+the real danger lay in the withdrawal.
+
+At the first attempt he uttered a kind of grunt and moved, throwing out
+his hand.  She thought that he was going to awake, and had hard work to
+keep herself where she was; but he did not move, and she began again with
+so infinite a precaution that the perspiration ran down her face and her
+hair within the hood hung dank on her neck.  Slowly, oh so slowly, she
+drew back the hand, and with it the packet; so slowly, and yet so
+resolutely, being put to it, that when the dreaded flash surprised her,
+and she saw his harsh swarthy face, steeped in the mysterious aloofness
+of sleep, within a hand's breadth of hers, not a muscle of her arm moved,
+nor did her hand quiver.
+
+It was done--at last!  With a burst of gratitude, of triumph, of
+exultation, she stood erect.  She realized that it was done, and that
+here in her hand she held the packet.  A deep gasp of relief, of joy, of
+thankfulness, and she glided towards the door.
+
+She groped for the latch, and in the act fancied his breathing was
+changed.  She paused, and bent her head to listen.  But the patter of the
+rain, drowning all sounds save those of the nearest origin, persuaded her
+that she was mistaken, and, finding the latch, she raised it, slipped
+like a shadow into the passage, and closed the door behind her.
+
+That done she stood arrested, all the blood in her body running to her
+heart.  She must be dreaming!  The passage in which she stood--the
+passage which she had left in black darkness--was alight; was so far
+lighted, at least, that to eyes fresh from the night, the figures of
+three men, grouped at the farther end, stood out against the glow of the
+lanthorn which they appeared to be trimming--for the two nearest were
+stooping over it.  These two had their backs to her, the third his face;
+and it was the sight of this third man which had driven the blood to her
+heart.  He ended at the waist!  It was only after a few seconds, it was
+only when she had gazed at him awhile in speechless horror, that he rose
+another foot from the floor, and she saw that he had paused in the act of
+ascending through a trapdoor.  What the scene meant, who these men were,
+or what their entrance portended, with these questions her brain refused
+at the moment to grapple.  It was much that--still remembering who might
+hear her, and what she held--she did not shriek aloud.
+
+Instead, she stood in the gloom at her end of the passage, gazing with
+all her eyes until she had seen the third man step clear of the trap.  She
+could see him; but the light intervened and blurred his view of her.  He
+stooped, almost as soon as he had cleared himself, to help up a fourth
+man, who rose with a naked knife between his teeth.  She saw then that
+all were armed, and something stealthy in their bearing, something cruel
+in their eyes as the light of the lanthorn fell now on one dark face and
+now on another, went to her heart and chilled it.  Who were they, and why
+were they here?  What was their purpose?  As her reason awoke, as she
+asked herself these questions, the fourth man stooped in his turn, and
+gave his hand to a fifth.  And on that she lost her self-control, and
+cried out.  For the last man to ascend was La Tribe--La Tribe, from whom
+she had parted that morning.
+
+The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the two
+whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked.  He who
+held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them.
+Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips.
+The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her,
+was Tignonville, was her lover!
+
+"_Mon Dieu_!" she whispered.  "What is it?  What is it?"
+
+Then, not till then, did he know her.  Until then the light of the
+lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom
+which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror.  But
+they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville
+came forward.
+
+The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather
+than upon reason.  The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she
+asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances;
+why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet
+into his hands.
+
+He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand
+which held his bare blade.  That done, silent as she, with his eyes set
+hard, he would have gone by her.  The sight of her _there_, guarding the
+door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions.
+But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way.  With her hand raised
+she pointed to the trapdoor.
+
+"Go!" she whispered, her tone stern and low, "you have what you want!
+Go!"
+
+"No!"  And he tried to pass her.
+
+"Go!" she repeated in the same tone.  "You have what you need."  And
+still she held her hand extended; still without faltering she faced the
+five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly
+eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping
+eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush.  Gradually
+her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and nobler aim
+subdued his weaker parts.  For she understood now; and he saw that she
+did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and said no word in
+his defence.
+
+But one of the men, savage and out of patience, thrust himself between
+them.
+
+"Where is he?" he muttered.  "What is the use of this?  Where is he?"  And
+his bloodshot eyes--it was Tuez-les-Moines--questioned the doors, while
+his hand, trembling and shaking on the haft of his knife, bespoke his
+eagerness.  "Where is he?  Where is he, woman?  Quick, or--"
+
+"I shall not tell you," she answered.
+
+"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog.  "You will tell us!  Or we will
+kill you too!  Where is he?  Where is he?"
+
+"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the
+fearlessness of scorn.  "Another step and I rouse the house!  M. de
+Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not
+retire--"
+
+"He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer.  "In which?  In
+which?"
+
+"Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its contempt.
+"Try them.  Rouse my women, alarm the house!  And when you have his
+people at your throats--five as they will be to one of you--thank your
+own mad folly!"
+
+Tuez-les-Moines' eyes glittered.  "You will not tell us?" he cried.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then--"
+
+But as the fanatic sprang on her, La Tribe flung his arms round him and
+dragged him back.
+
+"It would be madness," he cried.  "Are you mad, fool?  Have done!" he
+panted, struggling with him.  "If Madame gives the alarm--and he may be
+in any one of these four rooms, you cannot be sure which--we are undone."
+He looked for support to Tignonville, whose movement to protect the girl
+he had anticipated, and who had since listened sullenly.  "We have
+obtained what we need.  Will you requite Madame, who has gained it for us
+at her own risk--"
+
+"It is Monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.
+
+"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately.  He and
+Tuez were still gripping one another.  "I tell you, to go on is to risk
+what we have got!  And I for one--"
+
+"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered.  "Madame--"  He seemed to
+choke on the word.  "Will you swear that he is not here?"
+
+"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she hissed--all
+their words were sunk to that stealthy note.  "Go! if you have not stayed
+too long already.  Go!  Or see!"  And she pointed to the trapdoor, from
+which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment risen--the face
+dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told her at once that
+something was amiss.  "See what has come of your delay already!"
+
+"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly.  "In God's name come,
+whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again.  It is
+within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."
+
+"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper.
+"And on this Jezebel.  Let us kill her and him!  What matter afterwards?"
+And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.
+
+But the minister held him desperately.  "Are you mad?  Are you mad?" he
+answered.  "What can we do against thirty?  Let us be gone while we can.
+Let us be gone!  Come."
+
+"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly.  He had taken no side
+hitherto.  "The luck is against us!  'Tis no use to-night, man!"  And he
+turned with an air of sullen resignation.  Letting his legs drop through
+the trap, he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight.  Another
+made up his mind to go, and went.  Then only Tignonville, holding the
+lanthorn, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained
+with the fanatic.
+
+The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories
+overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to give
+way, she swayed a little on her feet.  But he did not notice it.  He was
+sunk in black rage--rage against her, rage against himself.
+
+"Take the light," she muttered unsteadily.  "And--and he must follow!"
+
+"And you?"
+
+But she could bear it no longer.  "Oh, go," she wailed.  "Go!  Will you
+never go?  If you love me, if you ever loved me, I implore you to go."
+
+He had betrayed little of a lover's feeling.  But he could not resist
+that appeal, and he turned silently.  Seizing Tuez-les-Moines by the
+other arm, he drew him by force to the trap.
+
+"Quiet, fool," he muttered savagely when the man would have resisted,
+"and go down!  If we stay to kill him, we shall have no way of escape,
+and his life will be dearly bought.  Down, man, down!"  And between them,
+in a struggling silence, with now and then an audible rap, or a ring of
+metal, the two forced the desperado to descend.
+
+La Tribe followed hastily.  Tignonville was the last to go.  In the act
+of disappearing he raised his lanthorn for a last glimpse of the
+Countess.  To his astonishment the passage was empty; she was gone.  Hard
+by him a door stood an inch or two ajar, and he guessed that it was hers,
+and swore under his breath, hating her at that moment.  But he did not
+guess how nicely she had calculated her strength; how nearly exhaustion
+had overcome her; or that, even while he paused--a fatal pause had he
+known it--eyeing the dark opening of the door, she lay as one dead, on
+the bed within.  She had fallen in a swoon, from which she did not
+recover until the sun had risen, and marched across one quarter of the
+heavens.
+
+Nor did he see another thing, or he might have hastened his steps.  Before
+the yellow light of his lanthorn faded from the ceiling of the passage,
+the door of the room farthest from the trap slid open.  A man, whose
+eyes, until darkness swallowed him, shone strangely in a face
+extraordinarily softened, came out on tip-toe.  This man stood awhile,
+listening.  At length, hearing those below utter a cry of dismay, he
+awoke to sudden activity.  He opened with a turn of the key the door
+which stood at his elbow, the door which led to the other part of the
+house.  He vanished through it.  A second later a sharp whistle pierced
+the darkness of the courtyard, and brought a dozen sleepers to their
+senses and their feet.  A moment, and the courtyard hummed with voices,
+above which one voice rang clear and insistent.  With a startled cry the
+inn awoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.  THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART.
+
+
+"But why," Madame St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stay in
+this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddle would
+set us in Angers?"
+
+"Because," Tavannes replied coldly--he and his cousin were walking before
+the gateway of the inn--"the Countess is not well, and will be the
+better, I think, for staying a day."
+
+"She slept soundly enough!  I'll answer for that!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She never raised her head this morning, though my women were shrieking
+'Murder!' next door, and--Name of Heaven!" Madame resumed, after breaking
+off abruptly, and shading her eyes with her hand, "what comes here?  Is
+it a funeral?  Or a pilgrimage?  If all the priests about here are as
+black, no wonder M. Rabelais fell out with them!"
+
+The inn stood without the walls for the convenience of those who wished
+to take the road early: a little also, perhaps, because food and forage
+were cheaper, and the wine paid no town-dues.  Four great roads met
+before the house, along the most easterly of which the sombre company
+which had caught Madame St. Lo's attention could be seen approaching.  At
+first Count Hannibal supposed with his companion that the travellers were
+conveying to the grave the corpse of some person of distinction; for the
+_cortege_ consisted mainly of priests and the like mounted on mules, and
+clothed for the most part in black.  Black also was the small banner
+which waved above them, and bore in place of arms the emblem of the
+Bleeding Heart.  But a second glance failed to discover either litter or
+bier; and a nearer approach showed that the travellers, whether they wore
+the tonsure or not, bore weapons of one kind or another.
+
+Suddenly Madame St. Lo clapped her hands, and proclaimed in great
+astonishment that she knew them.
+
+"Why, there is Father Boucher, the Cure of St. Benoist!" she said, "and
+Father Pezelay of St. Magloire.  And there is another I know, though I
+cannot remember his name!  They are preachers from Paris!  That is who
+they are!  But what can they be doing here?  Is it a pilgrimage, think
+you?"
+
+"Ay, a pilgrimage of Blood!" Count Hannibal answered between his teeth.
+And, turning to him to learn what moved him, she saw the look in his eyes
+which portended a storm.  Before she could ask a question, however, the
+gloomy company, which had first appeared in the distance, moving, an inky
+blot, through the hot sunshine of the summer morning, had drawn near, and
+was almost abreast of them.  Stepping from her side, he raised his hand
+and arrested the march.
+
+"Who is master here?" he asked haughtily.
+
+"I am the leader," answered a stout pompous Churchman, whose small
+malevolent eyes belied the sallow fatuity of his face.  "I, M. de
+Tavannes, by your leave."
+
+"And you, by your leave," Tavannes sneered, "are--"
+
+"Archdeacon and Vicar of the Bishop of Angers and Prior of the Lesser
+Brethren of St. Germain, M. le Comte.  Visitor also of the Diocese of
+Angers," the dignitary continued, puffing out his cheeks, "and Chaplain
+to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, whose unworthy brother I am."
+
+"A handsome glove, and well embroidered!" Tavannes retorted in a tone of
+disdain.  "The hand I see yonder!"  He pointed to the lean parchment mask
+of Father Pezelay, who coloured ever so faintly, but held his peace under
+the sneer.  "You are bound for Angers?" Count Hannibal continued.  "For
+what purpose, Sir Prior?"
+
+"His Grace the Bishop is absent, and in his absence--"
+
+"You go to fill his city with strife!  I know you!  Not you!" he
+continued, contemptuously turning from the Prior, and regarding the third
+of the principal figures of the party.  "But you!  You were the Cure who
+got the mob together last All Souls'."
+
+"I speak the words of Him Who sent me!" answered the third Churchman,
+whose brooding face and dull curtained eyes gave no promise of the fits
+of frenzied eloquence which had made his pulpit famous in Paris.
+
+"Then Kill and Burn are His alphabet!" Tavannes retorted, and heedless of
+the start of horror which a saying so near blasphemy excited among the
+Churchmen, he turned to Father Pezelay.  "And you!  You, too, I know!" he
+continued.  "And you know me!  And take this from me.  Turn, father!
+Turn!  Or worse than a broken head--you bear the scar, I see--will befall
+you.  These good persons, whom you have moved, unless I am in error, to
+take this journey, may not know me; but you do, and can tell them.  If
+they will to Angers, they must to Angers.  But if I find trouble in
+Angers when I come, I will hang some one high.  Don't scowl at me,
+man!"--in truth, the look of hate in Father Pezelay's eyes was enough to
+provoke the exclamation.  "Some one, and it shall not be a bare patch on
+the crown will save his windpipe from squeezing!"
+
+A murmur of indignation broke from the preachers' attendants; one or two
+made a show of drawing their weapons.  But Count Hannibal paid no heed to
+them, and had already turned on his heel when Father Pezelay spurred his
+mule a pace or two forward.  Snatching a heavy brass cross from one of
+the acolytes, he raised it aloft, and in the voice which had often
+thrilled the heated congregation of St. Magloire, he called on Tavannes
+to pause.
+
+"Stand, my lord!" he cried.  "And take warning!  Stand, reckless and
+profane, whose face is set hard as a stone, and his heart as a flint,
+against High Heaven and Holy Church!  Stand and hear!  Behold the word of
+the Lord is gone out against this city, even against Angers, for the
+unbelief thereof!  Her place shall be left unto her desolate, and her
+children shall be dashed against the stones!  Woe unto you, therefore, if
+you gainsay it, or fall short of that which is commanded! You shall
+perish as Achan, the son of Charmi, and as Saul!  The curse that has gone
+out against you shall not tarry, nor your days continue!  For the
+Canaanitish woman that is in your house, and for the thought that is in
+your heart, the place that was yours is given to another!  Yea, the sword
+is even now drawn that shall pierce your side!"
+
+"You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly.
+"And now mark me!  Preach as you please here.  But a word in Angers, and
+though you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after a fashion
+which will not please you!  If you value your tongue therefore,
+father--Oh, you shake off the dust, do you?  Well, pass on!  'Tis wise,
+perhaps."
+
+And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiously lifted
+to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on under its swaying
+banner, now one and now another of the acolytes looking back and raising
+his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on the blasphemer.  As the
+_cortege_ passed the huge watering-troughs, and the open gateway of the
+inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell on their knees.  In
+answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, and began to sing the
+_Eripe me, Domine_! and to its strains, now vengeful, now despairing, now
+rising on a wave of menace, they passed slowly into the distance, slowly
+towards Angers and the Loire.
+
+Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve.  "Enough for me!" she cried
+passionately.  "I go no farther with you!"
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"No farther!" she repeated.  She was pale, she shivered.  "Many thanks,
+my cousin, but we part company here.  I do not go to Angers.  I have seen
+horrors enough.  I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours and
+the east road.  For you, I foresee what will happen.  You will perish
+between the hammer and the anvil."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering.  "Give
+over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her.  And wash
+your hands of her and hers.  Or you will see her fall, and fall beside
+her!  Give her to him, I say--give her to him!"
+
+"My wife?"
+
+"Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the
+emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now.  "Is there a tie," and
+she pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose?
+That they will not unloose?  Is there a life which escapes if they doom
+it?  Did the Admiral escape?  Or Rochefoucauld?  Or Madame de Luns in old
+days?  I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see
+beforehand what will happen.  She will perish, and you with her.  Wife?  A
+pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."
+
+"And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.
+
+But she did not heed.  "I warned you of that!" she cried.  "And you would
+not believe me.  I told you he was following.  And I warn you of this.
+You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte!  If Tignonville
+does not murder you in your bed--"
+
+"I hold him in my power."
+
+"Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you.  For me, I have seen
+enough and more than enough.  I go to Tours by the east road."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "As you please," he said.
+
+She flung away in disgust with him.  She could not understand a man who
+played fast and loose at such a time.  The game was too fine for her, its
+danger too apparent, the gain too small.  She had, too, a woman's dread
+of the Church, a woman's belief in the power of the dead hand to punish.
+And in half an hour her orders were given.  In two hours her people were
+gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three of Tavannes'
+riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way.  Count Hannibal
+stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the side of
+Suzanne's mule.  He smiled; and presently, as he turned away, he did a
+thing rare with him--he laughed outright.
+
+A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself.  Few had seen Count
+Hannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as he
+laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn.  His men
+watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had
+overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and there
+was shaking of heads over it.  The man who had singed the Pope's beard
+and chucked cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the most daring
+of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons were not of
+this world.
+
+Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they known it.
+He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature to love
+peril; not--in the main, though a little, perhaps--because he knew that
+the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stood between him
+and death; not, though again a little, perhaps, because she had confirmed
+his choice by conduct which a small man might have deprecated, but which
+a great man loved; but chiefly, because the events of the night had
+placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid of which he looked to recover
+all the ground he had lost--lost by his impulsive departure from the pall
+of conduct on which he had started.
+
+Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by the rising
+of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolen the precious
+packet from his pillow.  The knowledge--for he had lain and felt her
+breath upon his cheek, he had lain and felt her hand beneath his pillow,
+he had lain while the impulse to fling his arms about her had been almost
+more than he could tame!  He had lain and suffered her to go, to pass out
+safely as she had passed in.  And then he had received his reward in the
+knowledge that, if she robbed him, she robbed him not for herself; and
+that where it was a question of his life she did not fear to risk her
+own.
+
+When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled.  How narrowly had he
+been saved from misjudging her!  Had he not lain and waited, had he not
+possessed himself in patience, he might have thought her in collusion
+with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with those who came to
+slay him.  Either he might have perished unwarned; or escaping that
+danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville and lost for all time
+the ideal of a noble woman.
+
+He had escaped that peril.  More, he had gained the weapons we have
+indicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almost intoxicated
+him.  Surely if he wielded those weapons to the best advantage, if he
+strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel of her heart must yield
+at last!
+
+He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to do things
+after a flamboyant fashion.  He knew that her act would plunge him in
+perils which she had not foreseen.  If the preachers roused the Papists
+of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for the massacre
+and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he did not give that
+signal there would be trouble.  There would be trouble of the kind in
+which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, trouble about the
+ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevin castle;
+trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.
+
+Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal his knowledge.
+Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he would forgive.  With the
+flood of peril which she had unloosed rising round them, he would say,
+"Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; he would say to her, "I know,
+and I forgive!"  That, that only, would fitly crown the policy on which
+he had decided from the first, though he had not hoped to conduct it on
+lines so splendid as those which now dazzled him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.  TEMPER.
+
+
+It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which
+on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the
+Countess.  She could not doubt that he had missed the packet on which so
+much hung and of which he had indicated the importance.  But if he had
+missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak?  Why did he not cry
+the alarm, search and question and pursue?  Why did he not give her that
+opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage failed, her
+resolution died within her?
+
+Above all, what was the secret of his strange merriment?  Of the snatches
+of song which broke from him, only to be hushed by her look of
+astonishment?  Of the parades which his horse, catching the infection,
+made under him, as he tossed his riding-cane high in the air and caught
+it?
+
+Ay, what?  Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been
+robbed of that of which he must give account--why did he cast off his
+melancholy and ride like the youngest?  She wondered what the men
+thought, and looking, saw them stare, saw that they watched him
+stealthily, saw that they laid their heads together.  What were they
+thinking of it?  She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more insistent
+than any to which the extremity of violence would have reduced her, began
+to grip her heart.
+
+Twenty hours of rest had lifted her from the state of collapse into which
+the events of the night had cast her; still her limbs at starting had
+shaken under her.  But the cool freshness of the early summer morning,
+and the sight of the green landscape and the winding Loir, beside which
+their road ran, had not failed to revive her spirits; and if he had shown
+himself merely gloomy, merely sunk in revengeful thoughts, or darting
+hither and thither the glance of suspicion, she felt that she could have
+faced him, and on the first opportunity could have told him the truth.
+
+But his new mood veiled she knew not what.  It seemed, if she
+comprehended it at all, the herald of some bizarre, some dreadful
+vengeance, in harmony with his fierce and mocking spirit.  Before it her
+heart became as water.  Even her colour little by little left her cheeks.
+She knew that he had only to look at her now to read the truth; that it
+was written in her face, in her shrinking figure, in the eyes which now
+guiltily sought and now avoided his.  And feeling sure that he did read
+it and know it, she fancied that he licked his lips, as the cat which
+plays with the mouse; she fancied that he gloated on her terror and her
+perplexity.
+
+This, though the day and the road were warrants for all cheerful
+thoughts.  On one side vineyards clothed the warm red slopes, and rose in
+steps from the valley to the white buildings of a convent.  On the other
+the stream wound through green flats where the black cattle stood knee-
+deep in grass, watched by wild-eyed and half-naked youths.  Again the
+travellers lost sight of the Loir, and crossing a shoulder, rode through
+the dim aisles of a beech-forest, through deep rustling drifts of last
+year's leaves.  And out again and down again they passed, and turning
+aside from the gateway, trailed along beneath the brown machicolated wall
+of an old town, from the crumbling battlements of which faces
+half-sleepy, half-suspicious, watched them as they moved below through
+the glare and heat.  Down to the river-level again, where a squalid
+anchorite, seated at the mouth of a cave dug in the bank, begged of them,
+and the bell of a monastery on the farther bank tolled slumberously the
+hour of Nones.
+
+And still he said nothing, and she, cowed by his mysterious gaiety, yet
+spurning herself for her cowardice, was silent also.  He hoped to arrive
+at Angers before nightfall.  What, she wondered, shivering, would happen
+there?  What was he planning to do to her?  How would he punish her?
+Brave as she was, she was a woman, with a woman's nerves; and fear and
+anticipation got upon them; and his silence--his silence which must mean
+a thing worse than words!
+
+And then on a sudden, piercing all, a new thought.  Was it possible that
+he had other letters?  If his bearing were consistent with anything, it
+was consistent with that.  Had he other genuine letters, or had he
+duplicate letters, so that he had lost nothing, but instead had gained
+the right to rack and torture her, to taunt and despise her?
+
+That thought stung her into sudden self-betrayal.  They were riding along
+a broad dusty track which bordered a stone causey raised above the level
+of winter floods.  Impulsively she turned to him.
+
+"You have other letters!" she cried.  "You have other letters!"  And
+freed for the moment from her terror, she fixed her eyes on his and
+strove to read his face.
+
+He looked at her, his mouth grown hard.  "What do you mean, Madame?" he
+asked,
+
+"You have other letters?"
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"From the King, for Angers!"
+
+He saw that she was going to confess, that she was going to derange his
+cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had been more
+than willing to forgive a real injury.
+
+"Will you explain?" he said between his teeth.  And his eyes glittered
+unpleasantly.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"You have other letters," she cried, "besides those which I stole."
+
+"Which you stole?"  He repeated the words without passion.  Enraged by
+this unexpected turn, he hardly knew how to take it.
+
+"Yes, I!" she cried.  "I!  I took them from under your pillow!"
+
+He was silent a minute.  Then he laughed and shook his head.
+
+"It will not do, Madame," he said, his lip curling.  "You are clever, but
+you do not deceive me."
+
+"Deceive you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You do not believe that I took the letters?" she cried in great
+amazement.
+
+"No," he answered, "and for a good reason."  He had hardened his heart
+now.  He had chosen his line, and he would not spare her.
+
+"Why, then?" she cried.  "Why?"
+
+"For the best of all reasons," he answered.  "Because the person who
+stole the letters was seized in the act of making his escape, and is now
+in my power."
+
+"The person--who stole the letters?" she faltered.
+
+"Yes, Madame."
+
+"Do you mean M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"You have said it."
+
+She turned white to the lips, and trembling, could with difficulty sit
+her horse.  With an effort she pulled it up, and he stopped also.  Their
+attendants were some way ahead.
+
+"And you have the letters?" she whispered, her eyes meeting his.  "You
+have the letters?"
+
+"No, but I have the thief!" Count Hannibal answered with sinister
+meaning.  "As I think you knew, Madame," he continued ironically, "a
+while back before you spoke."
+
+"I?  Oh no, no!" and she swayed in her saddle.  "What--what are you--going
+to do?" she muttered after a moment's stricken silence.
+
+"To him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The magistrates will decide, at Angers."
+
+"But he did not do it!  I swear he did not."
+
+Count Hannibal shook his head coldly.
+
+"I swear, Monsieur, I took the letters!" she repeated piteously.  "Punish
+me!"  Her figure, bowed like an old woman's over the neck of her horse,
+seemed to crave his mercy.
+
+Count Hannibal smiled.
+
+"You do not believe me?"
+
+"No," he said.  And then, in a tone which chilled her, "If I did believe
+you," he continued, "I should still punish him!"  She was broken; but he
+would see if he could not break her further.  He would try if there were
+no weak spot in her armour.  He would rack her now, since in the end she
+must go free.  "Understand, Madame," he continued in his harshest tone,
+"I have had enough of your lover.  He has crossed my path too often.  You
+are my wife, I am your husband.  In a day or two there shall be an end of
+this farce and of him."
+
+"He did not take them!" she wailed, her face sinking lower on her breast.
+"He did not take them!  Have mercy!"
+
+"Any way, Madame, they are gone!" Tavannes answered.  "You have taken
+them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will pay
+the price."
+
+If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband's hands had
+not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal's tone must have done so.  The
+shoot of new life which had raised its head after those dreadful days in
+Paris, and--for she was young--had supported her under the weight which
+the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders, died, withered under the
+heel of his brutality.  The pride which had supported her, which had won
+Tavannes' admiration and exacted his respect, sank, as she sank herself,
+bowed to her horse's neck, weeping bitter tears before him.  She
+abandoned herself to her misery, as she had once abandoned herself in the
+upper room in Paris.
+
+And he looked at her.  He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and
+he was not satisfied.  He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity would
+now have its full effect, would shine as the sun into a dark world; and
+yet he was not happy.  He could look forward to the morrow, and say, "She
+will understand me, she will know me!" and, lo, the thought that she wept
+for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew; and he thought, "Rather
+would she death from him, than life from me!  Though I give her creation,
+it will not alter her!  Though I strike the stars with my head, it is he
+who fills her world."
+
+The thought spurred him to further cruelty, impelled him to try if,
+prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her.
+
+"You don't ask after him?" he scoffed.  "He may be before or behind?  Or
+wounded or well?  Would you not know, Madame?  And what message he sent
+you?  And what he fears, and what hope he has?  And his last wishes?
+And--for while there is life there is hope--would you not learn where the
+key of his prison lies to-night?  How much for the key to-night, Madame?"
+
+Each question fell on her like the lash of a whip; but as one who has
+been flogged into insensibility, she did not wince.  That drove him on:
+he felt a mad desire to hear her prayers, to force her lower, to bring
+her to her knees.  And he sought about for a keener taunt.  Their
+attendants were almost out of sight before them; the sun, declining
+apace, was in their eyes.
+
+"In two hours we shall be in Angers," he said.  "Mon Dieu, Madame, it was
+a pity, when you two were taking letters, you did not go a step farther.
+You were surprised, or I doubt if I should be alive to-day!"
+
+Then she did look up.  She raised her head and met his gaze with such
+wonder in her eyes, such reproach in her tear-stained face, that his
+voice sank on the last word.
+
+"You mean--that I would have murdered you?" she said.  "I would have cut
+off my hand first.  What I did"--and now her voice was as firm as it was
+low--"what I did, I did to save my people.  And if it were to be done
+again, I would do it again!"
+
+"You dare to tell me that to my face?" he cried, hiding feelings which
+almost choked him.  "You would do it again, would you?  Mon Dieu, Madame,
+you need to be taught a lesson!"
+
+And by chance, meaning only to make the horses move on again, he raised
+his whip.  She thought that he was going to strike her, and she flinched
+at last.  The whip fell smartly on her horse's quarters, and it sprang
+forward.  Count Hannibal swore between his teeth.
+
+He had turned pale, she red as fire.  "Get on!  Get on!" he cried
+harshly.  "We are falling behind!"  And riding at her heels, flipping her
+horse now and then, he forced her to trot on until they overtook the
+servants.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.  THE BLACK TOWN.
+
+
+It was late evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to
+the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their journey.
+The glow of sunset had faded, but the sky was still warm with the last
+hues of day; and against its opal light the huge mass of the Angevin
+castle, which even in sunshine rises dark and forbidding above the
+Mayenne, stood up black and sharply defined.  Below it, on both banks of
+the river, the towers and spires of the city soared up from a sombre
+huddle of ridge-roofs, broken here by a round-headed gateway, crumbling
+and pigeon-haunted, that dated from St. Louis, and there by the gaunt
+arms of a windmill.
+
+The city lay dark under a light sky, keeping well its secrets.  Thousands
+were out of doors enjoying the evening coolness in alley and court, yet
+it betrayed the life which pulsed in its arteries only by the low murmur
+which rose from it.  Nevertheless, the Countess at sight of its roofs
+tasted the first moment of happiness which had been hers that day.  She
+might suffer, but she had saved.  Those roofs would thank her!  In that
+murmur were the voices of women and children she had redeemed!  At the
+sight and at the thought a wave of love and tenderness swept all
+bitterness from her breast.  A profound humility, a boundless
+thankfulness took possession of her.  Her head sank lower above her
+horse's mane; but this time it sank in reverence, not in shame.
+
+Could she have known what was passing beneath those roofs which night was
+blending in a common gloom--could she have read the thoughts which at
+that moment paled the cheeks of many a stout burgher, whose gabled house
+looked on the great square, she had been still more thankful.  For in
+attics and back rooms women were on their knees at that hour, praying
+with feverish eyes; and in the streets men--on whom their fellows, seeing
+the winding-sheet already at the chin, gazed askance--smiled, and showed
+brave looks abroad, while their hearts were sick with fear.
+
+For darkly, no man knew how, the news had come to Angers.  It had been
+known, more or less, for three days.  Men had read it in other men's
+eyes.  The tongue of a scold, the sneer of an injured woman had spread
+it, the birds of the air had carried it.  From garret window to garret
+window across the narrow lanes of the old town it had been whispered at
+dead of night; at convent grilles, and in the timber-yards beside the
+river.  Ten thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, it was
+rumoured, had perished in Paris.  In Orleans, all.  In Tours this man's
+sister; at Saumur that man's son.  Through France the word had gone forth
+that the Huguenots must die; and in the busy town the same roof-tree
+sheltered fear and hate, rage and cupidity.  On one side of the party-
+wall murder lurked fierce-eyed; on the other, the victim lay watching the
+latch, and shaking at a step.  Strong men tasted the bitterness of death,
+and women clasping their babes to their breasts smiled sickly into
+children's eyes.
+
+The signal only was lacking.  It would come, said some, from Saumur,
+where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a Papist,
+had his quarters.  From Paris, said others, directly from the King.  It
+might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the magistrates,
+it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting its coming.  No
+wonder that from lofty gable windows, and from dormers set high above the
+tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward, and ears sharpened by
+fear imagined above the noises of the city the ring of the iron shoes
+that carried doom.
+
+Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always
+desired--peace.  But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the lanes
+where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college courts, among
+all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a stir as of a hive
+deranged.  Here was grumbling against the magistrates--why wait?  There,
+stealthy plannings and arrangements; everywhere a grinding of weapons and
+casting of slugs.  Old grudges, new rivalries, a scholar's venom, a
+priest's dislike, here was final vent for all.  None need leave this
+feast unsated!
+
+It was a man of this class, sent out for the purpose, who first espied
+Count Hannibal's company approaching.  He bore the news into the town,
+and by the time the travellers reached the city gate, the dusky street
+within, on which lights were beginning to twinkle from booths and
+casements, was alive with figures running to meet them and crying the
+news as they ran.  The travellers, weary and road-stained, had no sooner
+passed under the arch than they found themselves the core of a great
+crowd which moved with them and pressed about them; now unbonneting, and
+now calling out questions, and now shouting, "Vive le Roi!  Vive le Roi!"
+Above the press, windows burst into light; and over all, the quaint
+leaning gables of the old timbered houses looked down on the hurry and
+tumult.
+
+They passed along a narrow street in which the rabble, hurrying at Count
+Hannibal's bridle, and often looking back to read his face, had much ado
+to escape harm; along this street and before the yawning doors of a great
+church whence a breath heavy with incense and burning wax issued to meet
+them.  A portion of the congregation had heard the tumult and struggled
+out, and now stood close-packed on the steps under the double vault of
+the portal.  Among them the Countess's eyes, as she rode by, a sturdy man-
+at-arms on either hand, caught and held one face.  It was the face of a
+tall, lean man in dusty black; and though she did not know him she seemed
+to have an equal attraction for him; for as their eyes met he seized the
+shoulder of the man next him and pointed her out.  And something in the
+energy of the gesture, or in the thin lips and malevolent eyes of the man
+who pointed, chilled the Countess's blood and shook her, she knew not
+why.
+
+Until then, she had known no fear save of her husband.  But at that a
+sense of the force and pressure of the crowd--as well as of the fierce
+passions, straining about her, which a word might unloose--broke upon
+her; and looking to the stern men on either side she fancied that she
+read anxiety in their faces.
+
+She glanced behind.  Boot to boot, the Count's men came on, pressing
+round her women and shielding them from the exuberance of the throng.  In
+their faces too she thought that she traced uneasiness.  What wonder if
+the scenes through which she had passed in Paris began to recur to her
+mind, and shook nerves already overwrought?
+
+She began to tremble.  "Is there--danger?" she muttered, speaking in a
+low voice to Bigot, who rode on her right hand.  "Will they do anything?"
+
+The Norman snorted.  "Not while he is in the saddle," he said, nodding
+towards his master, who rode a pace in front of them, his reins loose.
+"There be some here know him!" Bigot continued, in his drawling tone.
+"And more will know him if they break line.  Have no fear, Madame, he
+will bring you safe to the inn.  Down with the Huguenots?" he continued,
+turning from her and addressing a rogue who, holding his stirrup, was
+shouting the cry till he was crimson.  "Then why not away, and--"
+
+"The King!  The King's word and leave!" the man answered.
+
+"Ay, tell us!" shrieked another, looking upward, while he waved his cap;
+"have we the King's leave?"
+
+"You'll bide _his_ leave!" the Norman retorted, indicating the Count with
+his thumb.  "Or 'twill be up with you--on the three-legged horse!"
+
+"But he comes from the King!" the man panted.
+
+"To be sure.  To be sure!"
+
+"Then--"
+
+"You'll bide his time!  That's all!" Bigot answered, rather it seemed for
+his own satisfaction than the other's enlightenment.  "You'll all bide
+it, you dogs!" he continued in his beard, as he cast his eye over the
+weltering crowd.  "Ha! so we are here, are we?  And not too soon,
+either."
+
+He fell silent as they entered an open space, overlooked on one side by
+the dark facade of the cathedral, on the other three sides by houses more
+or less illumined.  The rabble swept into this open space with them and
+before them, filled much of it in an instant, and for a while eddied and
+swirled this way and that, thrust onward by the worshippers who had
+issued from the church and backwards by those who had been first in the
+square, and had no mind to be hustled out of hearing.  A stranger,
+confused by the sea of excited faces, and deafened by the clamour of
+"Vive le Roi!" "Vive Anjou!" mingled with cries against the Huguenots,
+might have fancied that the whole city was arrayed before him.  But he
+would have been wide of the mark.  The scum, indeed--and a dangerous
+scum--frothed and foamed and spat under Tavannes' bridle-hand; and here
+and there among them, but not of them, the dark-robed figure of a priest
+moved to and fro; or a Benedictine, or some smooth-faced acolyte egged on
+to the work he dared not do.  But the decent burghers were not there.
+They lay bolted in their houses; while the magistrates, with little heart
+to do aught except bow to the mob--or other their masters for the time
+being--shook in their council chamber.
+
+There is not a city of France which has not seen it; which has not known
+the moment when the mass impended, and it lay with one man to start it or
+stay its course.  Angers within its houses heard the clamour, and from
+the child, clinging to its mother's skirt, and wondering why she wept, to
+the Provost, trembled, believing that the hour had come.  The Countess
+heard it too, and understood it.  She caught the savage note in the voice
+of the mob--that note which means danger--and, her heart beating wildly,
+she looked to her husband.  Then, fortunately for her, fortunately for
+Angers, it was given to all to see that in Count Hannibal's saddle sat a
+man.
+
+He raised his hand for silence, and in a minute or two--not at once, for
+the square was dusky--it was obtained.  He rose in his stirrups, and
+bared his head.
+
+"I am from the King!" he cried, throwing his voice to all parts of the
+crowd.  "And this is his Majesty's pleasure and good will!  That every
+man hold his hand until to-morrow on pain of death, or worse!  And at
+noon his further pleasure will be known!  Vive le Roi!"
+
+And he covered his head again.
+
+"Vive le Roi!" cried a number of the foremost.  But their shouts were
+feeble and half-hearted, and were quickly drowned in a rising murmur of
+discontent and ill-humour, which, mingled with cries of "Is that all?  Is
+there no more?  Down with the Huguenots!" rose from all parts.  Presently
+these cries became merged in a persistent call, which had its origin, as
+far as could be discovered, in the darkest corner of the square.  A call
+for "Montsoreau!  Montsoreau!  Give us Montsoreau!"
+
+With another man, or had Tavannes turned or withdrawn, or betrayed the
+least anxiety, words had become actions, disorder a riot; and that in the
+twinkling of an eye.  But Count Hannibal, sitting his horse, with his
+handful of riders behind him, watched the crowd, as little moved by it as
+the Armed Knight of Notre Dame.  Only once did he say a word.  Then,
+raising his hand as before to gain a hearing--
+
+"You ask for Montsoreau?" he thundered.  "You will have Montfaucon if you
+do not quickly go to your homes!"
+
+At which, and at the glare of his eye, the more timid took fright.
+Feeling his gaze upon them, seeing that he had no intention of
+withdrawing, they began to sneak away by ones and twos.  Soon others
+missed them and took the alarm, and followed.  A moment and scores were
+streaming away through lanes and alleys and along the main street.  At
+last the bolder and more turbulent found themselves a remnant.  They
+glanced uneasily at one another and at Tavannes, took fright in their
+turn, and plunging into the current hastened away, raising now and then
+as they passed through the streets a cry of "Vive Montsoreau!
+Montsoreau!"--which was not without its menace for the morrow.
+
+Count Hannibal waited motionless until no more than half a dozen groups
+remained in the open.  Then he gave the word to dismount; for, so far,
+even the Countess and her women had kept their saddles, lest the movement
+which their retreat into the inn must have caused should be misread by
+the mob.  Last of all he dismounted himself, and with lights going before
+him and behind, and preceded by Bigot, bearing his cloak and pistols, he
+escorted the Countess into the house.  Not many minutes had elapsed since
+he had called for silence; but long before he reached the chamber looking
+over the square from the first floor, in which supper was being set for
+them, the news had flown through the length and breadth of Angers that
+for this night the danger was past.  The hawk had come to Angers, and lo!
+it was a dove.
+
+Count Hannibal strode to one of the open windows and looked out.  In the
+room, which was well lighted, were people of the house, going to and fro,
+setting out the table; to Madame, standing beside the hearth--which held
+its summer dressing of green boughs--while her woman held water for her
+to wash, the scene recalled with painful vividness the meal at which she
+had been present on the morning of the St. Bartholomew--the meal which
+had ushered in her troubles.  Naturally her eyes went to her husband, her
+mind to the horror in which she had held him then; and with a kind of
+shock--perhaps because the last few minutes had shown him in a new
+light--she compared her old opinion of him with that which, much as she
+feared him, she now entertained.
+
+This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had
+acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion.  He had treated
+her--brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck her.
+And yet--and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the point
+which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to understand.
+Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as she still
+dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of repulsion.
+
+She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in one,
+when he turned from the window.  Absorbed in thought, she had forgotten
+her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her half-dried hands.
+Before she knew what he was doing he was at her side; he bade the woman
+hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands.  Then he turned, and without
+looking at the Countess, he dried his hands on the farther end of the
+towel which she was still using.
+
+She blushed faintly.  A something in the act, more intimate and more
+familiar than had ever marked their intercourse, set her blood running
+strangely.  When he turned away and bade Bigot unbuckle his
+spur-leathers, she stepped forward.
+
+"I will do it!" she murmured, acting on a sudden and unaccountable
+impulse.  And as she knelt, she shook her hair about her face to hide its
+colour.
+
+"Nay, Madame, but you will soil your fingers!" he said coldly.
+
+"Permit me," she muttered half coherently.  And though her fingers shook,
+she pursued and performed her task.
+
+When she rose he thanked her; and then the devil in the man, or the
+Nemesis he had provoked when he took her by force from another--the
+Nemesis of jealousy, drove him to spoil all.
+
+"And for whose sake, Madame?" he added, with a jeer; "mine or M. de
+Tignonville's?"  And with a glance between jest and earnest, he tried to
+read her thoughts.
+
+She winced as if he had indeed struck her, and the hot colour fled her
+cheeks.
+
+"For his sake!" she said, with a shiver of pain.  "That his life may be
+spared!"  And she stood back humbly, like a beaten dog.  Though, indeed,
+it was for the sake of Angers, in thankfulness for the past rather than
+in any desperate hope of propitiating her husband, that she had done it!
+
+Perhaps he would have withdrawn his words.  But before he could answer,
+the host, bowing to the floor, came to announce that all was ready, and
+that the Provost of the City, for whom M. le Comte had sent, was in
+waiting below.
+
+"Let him come up!" Tavannes answered, grave and frowning.  "And see you,
+close the room, sirrah!  My people will wait on us.  Ah!" as the Provost,
+a burly man, with a face framed for jollity, but now pale and long,
+entered and approached him with many salutations.  "How comes it, M. le
+Prevot--you are the Prevot, are you not?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Comte."
+
+"How comes it that so great a crowd is permitted to meet in the streets?
+And that at my entrance, though I come unannounced, I find half of the
+city gathered together?"
+
+The Provost stared.  "Respect, M. le Comte," he said, "for His Majesty's
+letters, of which you are the bearer, no doubt induced some to come
+together."
+
+"Who said I brought letters?"
+
+"Who--?"
+
+"Who said I brought letters?" Count Hannibal repeated in a strenuous
+voice.  And he ground his chair half about and faced the astonished
+magistrate.  "Who said I brought letters?"
+
+"Why, my lord," the Provost stammered, "it was everywhere yesterday--"
+
+"Yesterday?"
+
+"Last night, at latest--that letters were coming from the King."
+
+"By my hand?"
+
+"By your lordship's hand--whose name is so well known here," the
+magistrate added, in the hope of clearing the great man's brow.
+
+Count Hannibal laughed darkly.  "My hand will be better known by-and-by,"
+he said.  "See you, sirrah, there is some practice here.  What is this
+cry of Montsoreau that I hear?"
+
+"Your lordship knows that he is His Grace's lieutenant-governor in
+Saumur."
+
+"I know that, man.  But is he here?"
+
+"He was at Saumur yesterday, and 'twas rumoured three days back that he
+was coming here to extirpate the Huguenots.  Then word came of your
+lordship and of His Majesty's letters, and 'twas thought that M. de
+Montsoreau would not come, his authority being superseded."
+
+"I see.  And now your rabble think that they would prefer M. Montsoreau.
+That is it, is it?"
+
+The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and opened his hands.
+
+"Pigs!" he said.  And having spat on the floor, he looked apologetically
+at the lady.  "True pigs!"
+
+"What connections has he here?" Tavannes asked.
+
+"He is a brother of my lord the Bishop's vicar, who arrived yesterday."
+
+"With a rout of shaven heads who have been preaching and stirring up the
+town!" Count Hannibal cried, his face growing red.  "Speak, man; is it
+so?  But I'll be sworn it is!"
+
+"There has been preaching," the Provost answered reluctantly.
+
+"Montsoreau may count his brother, then, for one.  He is a fool, but with
+a knave behind him, and a knave who has no cause to love us!  And the
+Castle?  'Tis held by one of M. de Montsoreau's creatures, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"With what force?"
+
+The magistrate shrugged his shoulders, and looked doubtfully at Badelon,
+who was keeping the door.  Tavannes followed the glance with his usual
+impatience.  "Mon Dieu, you need not look at him!" he cried.  "He has
+sacked St. Peter's and singed the Pope's beard with a holy candle!  He
+has been served on the knee by Cardinals; and is Turk or Jew, or monk or
+Huguenot as I please.  And Madame"--for the Provost's astonished eyes,
+after resting awhile on the old soldier's iron visage, had passed to
+her--"is Huguenot, so you need have no fear of her!  There, speak, man,"
+with impatience, "and cease to think of your own skin!"
+
+The Provost drew a deep breath, and fixed his small eyes on Count
+Hannibal.
+
+"If I knew, my lord, what you--why, my own sister's son"--he paused, his
+face began to work, his voice shook--"is a Huguenot!  Ay, my lord, a
+Huguenot!  And they know it!" he continued, a flush of rage augmenting
+the emotion which his countenance betrayed.  "Ay, they know it!  And they
+push me on at the Council, and grin behind my back; Lescot, who was
+Provost two years back, and would match his son with my daughter; and
+Thuriot, who prints for the University!  They nudge one another, and egg
+me on, till half the city thinks it is I who would kill the Huguenots!
+I!"  Again his voice broke.  "And my own sister's son a Huguenot!  And my
+girl at home white-faced for--for his sake."
+
+Tavannes scanned the man shrewdly.  "Perhaps she is of the same way of
+thinking?" he said.
+
+The Provost started, and lost one half of his colour.  "God forbid!" he
+cried, "saving Madame's presence!  Who says so, my lord, lies!"
+
+"Ay, lies not far from the truth."
+
+"My lord!"
+
+"Pish, man, Lescot has said it, and will act on it.  And Thuriot, who
+prints for the University!  Would you 'scape them?  You would?  Then
+listen to me.  I want but two things.  First, how many men has
+Montsoreau's fellow in the Castle?  Few, I know, for he is a niggard, and
+if he spends, he spends the Duke's pay."
+
+"Twelve.  But five can hold it."
+
+"Ay, but twelve dare not leave it!  Let them stew in their own broth!  And
+now for the other matter.  See, man, that before daybreak three gibbets,
+with a ladder and two ropes apiece, are set up in the square.  And let
+one be before this door.  You understand?  Then let it be done!  The
+rest," he added with a ferocious smile, "you may leave to me."
+
+The magistrate nodded rather feebly.  "Doubtless," he said, his eye
+wandering here and there, "there are rogues in Angers.  And for rogues
+the gibbet!  But saving your presence, my lord, it is a question
+whether--"
+
+But M. de Tavannes' patience was exhausted.  "Will you do it?" he roared.
+"That is the question.  And the only question."
+
+The Provost jumped, he was so startled.  "Certainly, my lord, certainly!"
+he muttered humbly.  "Certainly, I will!"  And bowing frequently, but
+saying no more, he backed himself out of the room.
+
+Count Hannibal laughed grimly after his fashion, and doubtless thought
+that he had seen the last of the magistrate for that night.  Great was
+his wrath, therefore, when, less than a minute later--and before Bigot
+had carved for him--the door opened, and the Provost appeared again.  He
+slid in, and without giving the courage he had gained on the stairs time
+to cool, plunged into his trouble.
+
+"It stands this way, M. le Comte," he bleated.  "If I put up the gibbets
+and a man is hanged, and you have letters from the King, 'tis a rogue the
+less, and no harm done.  But if you have no letters from His Majesty,
+then it is on my shoulders they will put it, and 'twill be odd if they do
+not find a way to hang me to right him."
+
+Count Hannibal smiled grimly.  "And your sister's son?" he sneered.  "And
+your girl who is white-faced for his sake, and may burn on the same
+bonfire with him?  And--"
+
+"Mercy!  Mercy!" the wretched Provost cried.  And he wrung his hands.
+"Lescot and Thuriot--"
+
+"Perhaps we may hang Lescot and Thuriot--"
+
+"But I see no way out," the Provost babbled.  "No way!  No way!"
+
+"I am going to show you one," Tavannes retorted.  "If the gibbets are not
+in place by sunrise, I shall hang you from this window.  That is one way
+out; and you'll be wise to take the other!  For the rest and for your
+comfort, if I have no letters, it is not always to paper that the King
+commits his inmost heart."
+
+The magistrate bowed.  He quaked, he doubted, but he had no choice.
+
+"My lord," he said, "I put myself in your hands.  It shall be done,
+certainly it shall be done.  But, but--" and shaking his head in
+foreboding, he turned to the door.  At the last moment, when he was
+within a pace of it, the Countess rose impulsively to her feet.  She
+called to him.
+
+"M. le Prevot, a minute, if you please," she said.  "There may be trouble
+to-morrow; your daughter may be in some peril.  You will do well to send
+her to me.  My lord"--and on the word her voice, uncertain before, grew
+full and steady--"will see that I am safe.  And she will be safe with
+me."
+
+The Provost saw before him only a gracious lady, moved by a
+thoughtfulness unusual in persons of her rank.  He was at no pains to
+explain the flame in her cheek, or the soft light which glowed in her
+eyes, as she looked at him across her formidable husband.  He was only
+profoundly grateful--moved even to tears.  Humbly thanking her, he
+accepted her offer for his child, and withdrew wiping his eyes.  When he
+was gone, and the door had closed behind him, Tavannes turned to the
+Countess, who still kept her feet.
+
+"You are very confident this evening," he sneered.  "Gibbets do not
+frighten you, it seems, madame.  Perhaps if you knew for whom the one
+before the door is intended?"
+
+She met his look with a searching gaze, and spoke with a ring of defiance
+in her tone.  "I do not believe it!" she said.  "I do not believe it!  You
+who save Angers will not destroy him!"  And then her woman's mood
+changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh no, you will not!
+You will not!" she wailed.  And she dropped on her knees before him, and
+holding up her clasped hands, "God will put it in your heart to spare
+him--and me!"
+
+He rose with a stifled oath, took two steps from her, and in a tone
+hoarse and constrained, "Go!" he said.  "Go, or sit!  Do you hear,
+Madame?  You try my patience too far!"
+
+But when she had gone his face was radiant.  He had brought her, he had
+brought all, to the point at which he aimed.  To-morrow his triumph
+awaited him.  To-morrow he who had cast her down would raise her up.
+
+He did not foresee what a day would bring forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.  IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
+
+
+The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the
+early fashion of the day, were open or opening.  Through all the gates
+country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with
+milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or
+chaffered over the fowl for the pot.  For men must eat, though there be
+gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and
+twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of
+interrogation.
+
+But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a
+space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it.  The
+sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all,
+was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased.  In the
+market, therefore, was hurrying.  Men cried their wares in lowered
+voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer.  The bargain
+struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into
+their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the
+rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open,
+and eyed the sinister preparations from afar.  The shadow of the things
+which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt
+black shapes lay across the length and breadth of Angers.  Even in the
+corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their
+nails in impotent anger, the stillness of fear ruled all.  Whatever Count
+Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely--and
+hour by hour it seemed less likely--that any would contradict him.
+
+He knew this as he walked in the sunlight before the inn, his spurs
+ringing on the stones as he made each turn, his movements watched by a
+hundred peering eyes.  After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have
+one's way in this world.  But then, he went on to remember, not every one
+had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful
+which lightly took the form of mercy.  He held Angers safe, curbed by his
+gibbets.  With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble
+would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant-
+Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.
+
+He might have felt less confident had he known what was passing at that
+moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St. Aubin, a room
+known at Angers as the Little Chapter-house.  It was a long chamber with
+a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might
+reach with dark chestnut wood.  Gloomily lighted by three grated windows,
+which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the
+Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last
+resting-place of worn-out odds and ends.  Piles of thin sheepskin folios,
+dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the
+walls; here and there among them lay a large brass-bound tome on which
+the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted.  A
+broken altar cumbered one corner: a stand bearing a curious--and
+rotting--map filled another.  In the other two corners a medley of faded
+scutcheons and banners, which had seen their last Toussaint procession,
+mouldered slowly into dust--into much dust.  The air of the room was full
+of it.
+
+In spite of which the long oak table that filled the middle of the
+chamber shone with use: so did the great metal standish which it bore.
+And though the seven men who sat about the table seemed, at a first
+glance and in that gloomy light, as rusty and faded as the rubbish behind
+them, it needed but a second look at their lean jaws and hungry eyes to
+be sure of their vitality.
+
+He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed rather
+plump than thin.  His white hands, gay with rings, were well cared for;
+his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy of a Cardinal.
+But though the Bishop's Vicar was heard with deference, it was noticeable
+that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked to the priest on his
+left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his opinion before they gave
+their own.  The Father's energy, indeed, had dominated the Angerins,
+clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had dominated the Parisian _devotes_
+who knew him well.  The vigour which hate inspires passes often for solid
+strength; and he who had seen with his own eyes the things done in Paris
+spoke with an authority to which the more timid quickly and easily
+succumbed.
+
+Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had
+been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had done
+wisely in coming.  Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word.
+
+"But if M. de Tavannes' order be to do nothing," he began doubtfully,
+"you would not, reverend Father, have us resist his Majesty's will?"
+
+"God forbid, my friend!" Father Pezelay answered with unction.  "But his
+Majesty's will is to do--to do for the glory of God and the saints and
+His Holy Church!  How?  Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful here?
+Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here?  Is that which the King
+did in Paris--to the utter extermination of the unbelieving and the
+purging of that Sacred City--against his will here?  Nay, his will is to
+do--to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in Saumur!  But his
+Minister is unfaithful!  The woman whom he has taken to his bosom has
+bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and put it in his mind
+to deny the mission he bears."
+
+"You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that
+effect, good Father?" the printer ventured.
+
+"Ask my lord's Vicar!  He knows the letters and the import of them!"
+
+"They are to that effect," the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the table
+with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly.  "I was in the
+Chancellery, and I saw them.  They are duplicates of those sent to
+Bordeaux."
+
+"Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots,"
+Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief.  And Thuriot's face
+lightened also.  "He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders,
+before he deals with the herd."
+
+"Think it not!" Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice.  "I tell
+you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!"
+
+For a moment there was silence.  Then, "But dare he do that, reverend
+Father?" Lescot asked slowly and incredulously.  "What?  Suppress the
+King's letters?"
+
+"There is nothing he will not dare!  There is nothing he has not dared!"
+the priest answered vehemently, the recollection of the scene in the
+great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully turned the
+tables on him, instilling venom into his tone.  "She who lives with him
+is the devil's.  She has bewitched him with her spells and her Sabbaths!
+She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and for her the fire is
+even now kindling!"
+
+The laymen who were present shuddered.  The two canons who faced them
+crossed themselves, muttering, "Avaunt, Satan!"
+
+"It is for you to decide," the priest continued, gazing on them
+passionately, "whether you will side with him or with the Angel of God!
+For I tell you it was none other executed the Divine judgments at Paris!
+It was none other but the Angel of God held the sword at Tours!  It is
+none other holds the sword here!  Are you for him or against him?  Are
+you for him, or for the woman with the mark of the Beast?  Are you for
+God or against God?  For the hour draws near!  The time is at hand!  You
+must choose!  You must choose!"  And, striking the table with his hand,
+he leaned forward, and with glittering eyes fixed each of them in turn,
+as he cried, "You must choose!  You must choose!"  He came to the
+Archdeacon last.
+
+The Bishop's Vicar fidgeted in his chair, his face a shade more shallow,
+his cheeks hanging a trifle more loosely, than ordinary.
+
+"If my brother were here!" he muttered.  "If M. de Montsoreau had
+arrived!"
+
+But Father Pezelay knew whose will would prevail if Montsoreau met
+Tavannes at his leisure.  To force Montsoreau's hand, therefore, to
+surround him on his first entrance with a howling mob already committed
+to violence, to set him at their head and pledge him before he knew with
+whom he had to do--this had been, this still was, the priest's design.
+
+But how was he to pursue it while those gibbets stood?  While their
+shadows lay even on the chapter table, and darkened the faces of his most
+forward associates?  That for a moment staggered the priest; and had not
+private hatred, ever renewed by the touch of the scar on his brow, fed
+the fire of bigotry he had yielded, as the rabble of Angers were
+yielding, reluctant and scowling, to the hand which held the city in its
+grip.  But to have come so far on the wings of hate, and to do nothing!
+To have come avowedly to preach a crusade, and to sneak away cowed!  To
+have dragged the Bishop's Vicar hither, and fawned and cajoled and
+threatened by turns--and for nothing!  These things were passing
+bitter--passing bitter, when the morsel of vengeance he had foreseen
+smacked so sweet on the tongue.
+
+For it was no common vengeance, no layman's vengeance, coarse and clumsy,
+which the priest had imagined in the dark hours of the night, when his
+feverish brain kept him wakeful.  To see Count Hannibal roll in the dust
+had gone but a little way towards satisfying him.  No!  But to drag from
+his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her to shame and
+torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to burn her as a
+witch--it was that which had seemed to the priest in the night hours a
+vengeance sweet in the mouth.
+
+But the thing seemed unattainable in the circumstances.  The city was
+cowed; the priest knew that no dependence was to be placed on Montsoreau,
+whose vice was avarice and whose object was plunder.  To the Archdeacon's
+feeble words, therefore, "We must look," the priest retorted sternly,
+"not to M. de Montsoreau, reverend Father, but to the pious of Angers!  We
+must cry in the streets, 'They do violence to God!  They wound God and
+His Mother!'  And so, and so only, shall the unholy thing be rooted out!"
+
+"Amen!" the Cure of St.-Benoist muttered, lifting his head; and his dull
+eyes glowed awhile.  "Amen!  Amen!"  Then his chin sank again upon his
+breast.
+
+But the Canons of Angers looked doubtfully at one another, and timidly at
+the speakers; the meat was too strong for them.  And Lescot and Thuriot
+shuffled in their seats.  At length, "I do not know," Lescot muttered
+timidly.
+
+"You do not know?"
+
+"What can be done!"
+
+"The people will know!" Father Pezelay retorted "Trust them!"
+
+"But the people will not rise without a leader."
+
+"Then will I lead them!"
+
+"Even so, reverend Father--I doubt," Lescot faltered.  And Thuriot nodded
+assent.  Gibbets were erected in those days rather for laymen than for
+the Church.
+
+"You doubt!" the priest cried.  "You doubt!"  His baleful eyes passed
+from one to the other; from them to the rest of the company.  He saw that
+with the exception of the Cure of St.-Benoist all were of a mind.  "You
+doubt!  Nay, but I see what it is!  It is this," he continued slowly and
+in a different tone, "the King's will goes for nothing in Angers!  His
+writ runs not here.  And Holy Church cries in vain for help against the
+oppressor.  I tell you, the sorceress who has bewitched him has bewitched
+you also.  Beware! beware, therefore, lest it be with you as with him!
+And the fire that shall consume her, spare not your houses!"
+
+The two citizens crossed themselves, grew pale and shuddered.  The fear
+of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it, enormous.
+Even the Canons looked startled.
+
+"If--if my brother were here," the Archdeacon repeated feebly, "something
+might be done!"
+
+"Vain is the help of man!" the priest retorted sternly, and with a
+gesture of sublime dismissal.  "I turn from you to a mightier than you!"
+And, leaning his head on his hands, he covered his face.
+
+The Archdeacon and the churchmen looked at him, and from him their scared
+eyes passed to one another.  Their one desire now was to be quit of the
+matter, to have done with it, to escape; and one by one with the air of
+whipped curs they rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be gone muttered
+a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of the room.  Lescot
+and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less than a minute the
+two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained the only occupants of
+the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean official in rusty black, who
+throughout the conference had sat by the door.
+
+Until the last shuffling footstep had ceased to sound in the still
+cloister no one spoke.  Then Father Pezelay looked up, and the eyes of
+the two priests met in a long gaze.
+
+"What think you?" Pezelay muttered at last.
+
+"Wet hay," the other answered dreamily, "is slow to kindle, yet burns if
+the fire be big enough.  At what hour does he state his will?"
+
+"At noon."
+
+"In the Council Chamber?"
+
+"It is so given out."
+
+"It is three hundred yards from the Place Ste.-Croix and he must go
+guarded," the Cure of St.-Benoist continued in the same dull fashion.  "He
+cannot leave many in the house with the woman.  If it were attacked in
+his absence--"
+
+"He would return, and--"  Father Pezelay shook his head, his cheek turned
+a shade paler.  Clearly, he saw with his mind's eye more than he
+expressed.
+
+"_Hoc est corpus_," the other muttered, his dreamy gaze on the table.  "If
+he met us then, on his way to the house and we had bell, book, and
+candle, would he stop?"
+
+"He would not stop!" Father Pezelay rejoined.
+
+"He would not?"
+
+"I know the man!"
+
+"Then--" but the rest St. Benoist whispered, his head drooping forward;
+whispered so low that even the lean man behind him, listening with greedy
+ears, failed to follow the meaning of his superior's words.  But that he
+spoke plainly enough for his hearer Father Pezelay's face was witness.
+Astonishment, fear, hope, triumph, the lean pale face reflected all in
+turn; and, underlying all, a subtle malignant mischief, as if a devil's
+eyes peeped through the holes in an opera mask.
+
+When the other was at last silent, Pezelay drew a deep breath.
+
+"'Tis bold!  Bold!  Bold!" he muttered.  "But have you thought?  He who
+bears the--"
+
+"Brunt?" the other whispered, with a chuckle.  "He may suffer?  Yes, but
+it will not be you or I!  No, he who was last here shall be first there!
+The Archdeacon-Vicar--if we can persuade him--who knows but that even for
+him the crown of martyrdom is reserved?"  The dull eyes flickered with
+unholy amusement.
+
+"And the alarm that brings him from the Council Chamber?"
+
+"Need not of necessity be real.  The pinch will be to make use of it.
+Make use of it--and the hay will burn!"
+
+"You think it will?"
+
+"What can one man do against a thousand?  His own people dare not support
+him."
+
+Father Pezelay turned to the lean man who kept the door, and, beckoning
+to him, conferred a while with him in a low voice.
+
+"A score or so I might get," the man answered presently, after some
+debate.  "And well posted, something might be done.  But we are not in
+Paris, good father, where the Quarter of the Butchers is to be counted
+on, and men know that to kill Huguenots is to do God service!  Here"--he
+shrugged his shoulders contemptuously--"they are sheep."
+
+"It is the King's will," the priest answered, frowning on him darkly.
+
+"Ay, but it is not Tavannes'," the man in black answered with a grimace.
+"And he rules here to-day."
+
+"Fool!" Pezelay retorted.  "He has not twenty with him.  Do you do as I
+say, and leave the rest to Heaven!"
+
+"And to you, good master?" the other answered.  "For it is not all you
+are going to do," he continued, with a grin, "that you have told me.
+Well, so be it!  I'll do my part, but I wish we were in Paris.  St.
+Genevieve is ever kind to her servants."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.  THE ESCAPE.
+
+
+In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean,
+dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect
+more informing than a blind wall, two men sat, fretting; or, rather, one
+man sat, his chin resting on his hand, while his companion, less patient
+or more sanguine, strode ceaselessly to and fro.  In the first despair of
+capture--for they were prisoners--they had made up their minds to the
+worst, and the slow hours of two days had passed over their heads without
+kindling more than a faint spark of hope in their breasts.  But when they
+had been taken out and forced to mount and ride--at first with feet tied
+to the horses' girths--they had let the change, the movement, and the
+open air fan the flame.  They had muttered a word to one another, they
+had wondered, they had reasoned.  And though the silence of their
+guards--from whose sour vigilance the keenest question drew no
+response--seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with their knowledge of the man
+into whose hands they had fallen, should have quenched the spark, these
+two, having special reasons, the one the buoyancy of youth, the other the
+faith of an enthusiast, cherished the flame.  In the breast of one indeed
+it had blazed into a confidence so arrogant that he now took all for
+granted, and was not content.
+
+"It is easy for you to say 'Patience!'" he cried, as he walked the floor
+in a fever.  "You stand to lose no more than your life, and if you escape
+go free at all points!  But he has robbed me of more than life!  Of my
+love, and my self-respect, curse him!  He has worsted me not once, but
+twice and thrice!  And if he lets me go now, dismissing me with my life,
+I shall--I shall kill him!" he concluded, through his teeth.
+
+"You are hard to please!"
+
+"I shall kill him!"
+
+"That were to fall still lower!" the minister answered, gravely regarding
+him.  "I would, M. de Tignonville, you remembered that you are not yet
+out of jeopardy.  Such a frame of mind as yours is no good preparation
+for death, let me tell you!"
+
+"He will not kill us!" Tignonville cried.  "He knows better than most men
+how to avenge himself!"
+
+"Then he is above most!" La Tribe retorted.  "For my part I wish I were
+sure of the fact, and I should sit here more at ease."
+
+"If we could escape, now, of ourselves!" Tignonville cried.  "Then we
+should save not only life, but honour!  Man, think of it!  If we could
+escape, not by his leave, but against it!  Are you sure that this is
+Angers?"
+
+"As sure as a man can be who has only seen the Black Town once or twice!"
+La Tribe answered, moving to the casement--which was not glazed--and
+peering through the rough wooden lattice.  "But if we could escape we are
+strangers here.  We know not which way to go, nor where to find shelter.
+And for the matter of that," he continued, turning from the window with a
+shrug of resignation, "'tis no use to talk of it while yonder foot goes
+up and down the passage, and its owner bears the key in his pocket."
+
+"If we could get out of his power as we came into it!" Tignonville cried.
+
+"Ay, if!  But it is not every floor has a trap!"
+
+"We could take up a board."
+
+The minister raised his eyebrows.
+
+"We could take up a board!" the younger man repeated; and he stepped the
+mean chamber from end to end, his eyes on the floor.  "Or--yes, _mon
+Dieu_!" with a change of attitude, "we might break through the roof?"
+And, throwing back his head, he scanned the cobwebbed surface of laths
+which rested on the unceiled joists.
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"Well, why not, Monsieur?  Why not break through the ceiling?"
+Tignonville repeated, and in a fit of energy he seized his companion's
+shoulder and shook him.  "Stand on the bed, and you can reach it."
+
+"And the floor which rests on it!"
+
+"_Par Dieu_, there is no floor!  'Tis a cockloft above us!  See there!
+And there!"  And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel of
+a spur through the laths.  La Tribe's expression changed.  He rose slowly
+to his feet.
+
+"Try again!" he said.
+
+Tignonville, his face red, drove the spur again between the laths, and
+worked it to and fro until he could pass his fingers into the hole he had
+made.  Then he gripped and bent down a length of one of the laths, and,
+passing his arm as far as the elbow through the hole, moved it this way
+and that.  His eyes, as he looked down at his companion through the
+falling rubbish, gleamed with triumph.
+
+"Where is your floor now?" he asked.
+
+"You can touch nothing?"
+
+"Nothing.  It's open.  A little more and I might touch the tiles."  And
+he strove to reach higher.
+
+For answer La Tribe gripped him.  "Down!  Down, Monsieur," he muttered.
+"They are bringing our dinner."
+
+Tignonville thrust back the lath as well as he could, and slipped to the
+floor; and hastily the two swept the rubbish from the bed.  When Badelon,
+attended by two men, came in with the meal he found La Tribe at the
+window blocking much of the light, and Tignonville laid sullenly on the
+bed.  Even a suspicious eye must have failed to detect what had been
+done; the three who looked in suspected nothing and saw nothing.  They
+went out, the key was turned again on the prisoners, and the footsteps of
+two of the men were heard descending the stairs.
+
+"We have an hour, now!" Tignonville cried; and leaping, with flaming
+eyes, on the bed, he fell to hacking and jabbing and tearing at the laths
+amid a rain of dust and rubbish.  Fortunately the stuff, falling on the
+bed, made little noise; and in five minutes, working half-choked and in a
+frenzy of impatience, he had made a hole through which he could thrust
+his arms, a hole which extended almost from one joist to its neighbour.
+By this time the air was thick with floating lime; the two could scarcely
+breathe, yet they dared not pause.  Mounting on La Tribe's shoulders--who
+took his stand on the bed--the young man thrust his head and arms through
+the hole, and, resting his elbows on the joists, dragged himself up, and
+with a final effort of strength landed nose and knees on the timbers,
+which formed his supports.  A moment to take breath, and press his torn
+and bleeding fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to
+his companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage.
+
+They found themselves in a long narrow cockloft, not more than six feet
+high at the highest, and insufferably hot.  Between the tiles, which
+sloped steeply on either hand, a faint light filtered in, disclosing the
+giant rooftree running the length of the house, and at the farther end of
+the loft the main tie-beam, from which a network of knees and struts rose
+to the rooftree.
+
+Tignonville, who seemed possessed by unnatural energy, stayed only to put
+off his boots.  Then "Courage!" he panted, "all goes well!" and, carrying
+his boots in his hands, he led the way, stepping gingerly from joist to
+joist until he reached the tie-beam.  He climbed on it, and, squeezing
+himself between the struts, entered a second loft, similar to the first.
+At the farther end of this a rough wall of bricks in a timber-frame
+lowered his hopes; but as he approached it, joy!  Low down in the corner
+where the roof descended, a small door, square, and not more than two
+feet high, disclosed itself.
+
+The two crept to it on hands and knees and listened.  "It will lead to
+the leads, I doubt?" La Tribe whispered.  They dared not raise their
+voices.
+
+"As well that way as another!" Tignonville answered recklessly.  He was
+the more eager, for there is a fear which transcends the fear of death.
+His eyes shone through the mask of dust, the sweat ran down to his chin,
+his breath came and went noisily.  "Naught matters if we can escape him!"
+he panted.  And he pushed the door recklessly.  It flew open; the two
+drew back their faces with a cry of alarm.
+
+They were looking, not into the sunlight, but into a grey dingy garret
+open to the roof, and occupying the upper part of a gable-end somewhat
+higher than the wing in which they had been confined.  Filthy truckle-
+beds and ragged pallets covered the floor, and, eked out by old saddles
+and threadbare horserugs, marked the sleeping quarters either of the
+servants or of travellers of the meaner sort.  But the dinginess was
+naught to the two who knelt looking into it, afraid to move.  Was the
+place empty?  That was the point; the question which had first stayed,
+and then set their pulses at the gallop.
+
+Painfully their eyes searched each huddle of clothing, scanned each
+dubious shape.  And slowly, as the silence persisted, their heads came
+forward until the whole floor lay within the field of sight.  And still
+no sound!  At last Tignonville stirred, crept through the doorway, and
+rose up, peering round him.  He nodded, and, satisfied that all was safe,
+the minister followed him.
+
+They found themselves a pace or so from the head of a narrow staircase,
+leading downwards.  Without moving, they could see the door which closed
+it below.  Tignonville signed to La Tribe to wait, and himself crept down
+the stairs.  He reached the door, and, stooping, set his eye to the hole
+through which the string of the latch passed.  A moment he looked, and
+then, turning on tiptoe, he stole up again, his face fallen.
+
+"You may throw the handle after the hatchet!" he muttered.  "The man on
+guard is within four yards of the door."  And in the rage of
+disappointment he struck the air with his hand.
+
+"Is he looking this way?"
+
+"No.  He is looking down the passage towards our room.  But it is
+impossible to pass him."
+
+La Tribe nodded, and moved softly to one of the lattices which lighted
+the room.  It might be possible to escape that way, by the parapet and
+the tiles.  But he found that the casement was set high in the roof,
+which sloped steeply from its sill to the eaves.  He passed to the other
+window, in which a little wicket in the lattice stood open.  He looked
+through it.  In the giddy void white pigeons were wheeling in the
+dazzling sunshine, and, gazing down, he saw far below him, in the hot
+square, a row of booths, and troops of people moving to and fro like
+pigmies; and--and a strange thing, in the middle of all!  Involuntarily,
+as if the persons below could have seen his face at the tiny dormer, he
+drew back.
+
+He beckoned to M. Tignonville to come to him; and when the young man
+complied, he bade him in a whisper look down.  "See!" he muttered.
+"There!"
+
+The younger man saw and drew in his breath.  Even under the coating of
+dust his face turned a shade greyer.
+
+"You had no need to fear that he would let us go!" the minister muttered,
+with half-conscious irony.
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor I!  There are two ropes."  And La Tribe breathed a few words of
+prayer.  The object which had fixed his gaze was a gibbet: the only one
+of the three which could be seen from their eyrie.
+
+Tignonville, on the other hand, turned sharply away, and with haggard
+eyes stared about the room.  "We might defend the staircase," he
+muttered.  "Two men might hold it for a time."
+
+"We have no food."
+
+"No."  Suddenly he gripped La Tribe's arm.  "I have it!" he cried.  "And
+it may do!  It must do!" he continued, his face working.  "See!"  And
+lifting from the floor one of the ragged pallets, from which the straw
+protruded in a dozen places, he set it flat on his head.
+
+It drooped at each corner--it had seen much wear--and, while it almost
+hid his face, it revealed his grimy chin and mortar-stained shoulders.  He
+turned to his companion.
+
+La Tribe's face glowed as he looked.  "It may do!" he cried.  "It's a
+chance!  But you are right!  It may do!"
+
+Tignonville dropped the ragged mattress, and tore off his coat; then he
+rent his breeches at the knee, so that they hung loose about his calves.
+
+"Do you the same!" he cried.  "And quick, man, quick!  Leave your boots!
+Once outside we must pass through the streets under these"--he took up
+his burden again and set it on his head--"until we reach a quiet part,
+and there we--"
+
+"Can hide!  Or swim the river!" the minister said.  He had followed his
+companion's example, and now stood under a similar burden.  With breeches
+rent and whitened, and his upper garments in no better case, he looked a
+sorry figure.
+
+Tignonville eyed him with satisfaction, and turned to the staircase.
+
+"Come," he cried, "there is not a moment to be lost.  At any minute they
+may enter our room and find it empty!  You are ready?  Then, not too
+softly, or it may rouse suspicion!  And mumble something at the door."
+
+He began himself to scold, and, muttering incoherently, stumbled down the
+staircase, the pallet on his head rustling against the wall on each side.
+Arrived at the door, he fumbled clumsily with the latch, and, when the
+door gave way, plumped out with an oath--as if the awkward burden he bore
+were the only thing on his mind.  Badelon--he was on duty--stared at the
+apparition; but the next moment he sniffed the pallet, which was none of
+the freshest, and, turning up his nose, he retreated a pace.  He had no
+suspicion; the men did not come from the part of the house where the
+prisoners lay, and he stood aside to let them pass.  In a moment,
+staggering, and going a little unsteadily, as if they scarcely saw their
+way, they had passed by him, and were descending the staircase.
+
+So far well!  Unfortunately, when they reached the foot of that flight
+they came on the main passage of the first-floor.  It ran right and left,
+and Tignonville did not know which way he must turn to reach the lower
+staircase.  Yet he dared not hesitate; in the passage, waiting about the
+doors, were four or five servants, and in the distance he caught sight of
+three men belonging to Tavannes' company.  At any moment, too, an upper
+servant might meet them, ask what they were doing, and detect the fraud.
+He turned at random, therefore--to the left as it chanced--and marched
+along bravely, until the very thing happened which he had feared.  A man
+came from a room plump upon them, saw them, and held up his hands in
+horror.
+
+"What are you doing?" he cried in a rage and with an oath.  "Who set you
+on this?"
+
+Tignonville's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.  La Tribe from
+behind muttered something about the stable.
+
+"And time too!" the man said.  "Faugh!  But how come you this way?  Are
+you drunk?  Here!"  He opened the door of a musty closet beside him,
+"Pitch them in here, do you hear?  And take them down when it is dark.
+Faugh.  I wonder you did not carry the things though her ladyship's room
+at once!  If my lord had been in and met you!  Now then, do as I tell
+you!  Are you drunk?"
+
+With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress.  La Tribe did the
+same.  Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many
+helpers and strange servants in the inn.  The butler only thought them
+ill-looking fellows who knew no better.
+
+"Now be off!" he continued irascibly.  "This is no place for your sort.
+Be off!"  And, as they moved, "Coming!  Coming!" he cried in answer to a
+distant summons; and he hurried away on the errand which their appearance
+had interrupted.
+
+Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the man
+had left the key in the door.  But as he went to do so the butler looked
+back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following him.  A
+moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew to regain
+them.  A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a pace of him
+opened, a woman came out.  She recoiled from the strange figure; her eyes
+met his.  Unluckily the light from the room behind her fell on his face,
+and with a shrill cry she named him.
+
+One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other
+end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way.  With
+presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and, huddling
+her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at his heels.
+
+It was a large room, in which seven or eight people, who had been at
+prayers when the cry startled them, were rising from their knees.  The
+first thing they saw was Javette on the threshold, struggling in the
+grasp of a wild man, ragged and begrimed; they deemed the city risen and
+the massacre upon them.  Carlat threw himself before his mistress, the
+Countess in her turn sheltered a young girl, who stood beside her and
+from whose face the last trace of colour had fled.  Madame Carlat and a
+waiting-woman ran shrieking to the window; another instant and the alarm
+would have gone abroad.
+
+Tignonville's voice stopped it.  "Don't you know me?" he cried, "Madame!
+you at least!  Carlat!  Are you all mad?"
+
+The words stayed them where they stood in an astonishment scarce less
+than their alarm.  The Countess tried twice to speak; the third time--
+
+"Have you escaped?" she muttered.
+
+Tignonville nodded, his eyes bright with triumph.  "So far," he said.
+"But they may be on our heels at any moment!  Where can we hide?"
+
+The Countess, her hand pressed to her side, looked at Javette.
+
+"The door, girl!" she whispered.  "Lock it!"
+
+"Ay, lock it!  And they can go by the back-stairs," Madame Carlat
+answered, awaking suddenly to the situation.  "Through my closet!  Once
+in the yard they may pass out through the stables."
+
+"Which way?" Tignonville asked impatiently.  "Don't stand looking at me,
+but--"
+
+"Through this door!" Madame Carlat answered, hurrying to it.
+
+He was following when the Countess stepped forward and interposed between
+him and the door.
+
+"Stay!" she cried; and there was not one who did not notice a new
+decision in her voice, a new dignity in her bearing.  "Stay, Monsieur, we
+may be going too fast.  To go out now and in that guise--may it not be to
+incur greater peril than you incur here?  I feel sure that you are in no
+danger of your life at present.  Therefore, why run the risk--"
+
+"In no danger, Madame!" he cried, interrupting her in astonishment.  "Have
+you seen the gibbet in the Square?  Do you call that no danger?"
+
+"It is not erected for you."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No, Monsieur," she answered firmly, "I swear it is not.  And I know of
+reasons, urgent reasons, why you should not go.  M. de Tavannes"--she
+named her husband nervously, as conscious of the weak spot--"before he
+rode abroad laid strict orders on all to keep within, since the smallest
+matter might kindle the city.  Therefore, M. de Tignonville, I request,
+nay I entreat," she continued with greater urgency, as she saw his
+gesture of denial, "you to stay here until he returns."
+
+"And you, Madame, will answer for my life?"
+
+She faltered.  For a moment, a moment only, her colour ebbed.  What if
+she deceived herself?  What if she surrendered her old lover to death?
+What if--but the doubt was of a moment only.  Her duty was plain.
+
+"I will answer for it," she said, with pale lips, "if you remain here.
+And I beg, I implore you--by the love you once had for me, M. de
+Tignonville," she added desperately, seeing that he was about to refuse,
+"to remain here."
+
+"Once!" he retorted, lashing himself into ignoble rage.  "By the love I
+once had!  Say, rather, the love I have, Madame--for I am no
+woman-weathercock to wed the winner, and hold or not hold, stay or go, as
+he commands!  You, it seems," he continued with a sneer, "have learned
+the wife's lesson well!  You would practise on me now, as you practised
+on me the other night when you stood between him and me!  I yielded then,
+I spared him.  And what did I get by it?  Bonds and a prison!  And what
+shall I get now?  The same!  No, Madame," he continued bitterly,
+addressing himself as much to the Carlats and the others as to his old
+mistress.  "I do not change!  I loved!  I love!  I was going and I go!  If
+death lay beyond that door"--and he pointed to it--"and life at his will
+were certain here, I would pass the threshold rather than take my life of
+him!"  And, dragging La Tribe with him, with a passionate gesture he
+rushed by her, opened the door, and disappeared in the next room.
+
+The Countess took one pace forward, as if she would have followed him, as
+if she would have tried further persuasion.  But as she moved a cry
+rooted her to the spot.  A rush of feet and the babel of many voices
+filled the passage with a tide of sound, which drew rapidly nearer.  The
+escape was known!  Would the fugitives have time to slip out below?
+
+Some one knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it.  But the
+Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking out.
+
+If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken.  Yet no; as
+the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and then a
+second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest turning, out of
+the Place Ste.-Croix.  Before they gained it, four men, of whom, Badelon,
+his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in pursuit, and the street
+rang with cries of "Stop him!  Seize him!  Seize him!"  Some one--one of
+the pursuers or another--to add to the alarm let off a musket, and in a
+moment, as if the report had been a signal, the Place was in a hubbub,
+people flocked into it with mysterious quickness, and from a neighbouring
+roof--whence, precisely, it was impossible to say--the crackling fire of
+a dozen arquebuses alarmed the city far and wide.
+
+Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning.
+Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted across
+the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in the
+gathering crowd.  But the pursuers clung desperately to their skirts,
+overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a twinkling,
+Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg and fell, and La
+Tribe stumbled over him and fell also.  The four riders flung themselves
+fiercely on their prey, secured them, and began to drag them with oaths
+and curses towards the door of the inn.
+
+The Countess had seen all from her window; had held her breath while they
+ran, had drawn it sharply when they fell.  Now, "They have them!" she
+muttered, a sob choking her, "they have them!"  And she clasped her
+hands.  If he had followed her advice!  If he had only followed her
+advice!
+
+But the issue proved less certain than she deemed it.  The crowd, which
+grew each moment, knew nothing of pursuers or pursued.  On the contrary,
+a cry went up that the riders were Huguenots, and that the Huguenots were
+rising and slaying the Catholics; and as no story was too improbable for
+those days, and this was one constantly set about, first one stone flew,
+and then another, and another.  A man with a staff darted forward and
+struck Badelon on the shoulder, two or three others pressed in and
+jostled the riders; and if three of Tavannes' following had not run out
+on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment
+forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the
+very door of the inn.  As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were
+flung to and barred in the nick of time.  Another moment, almost another
+second, and the mob had seized them.  As it was, a hail of stones poured
+on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there
+presently floated heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the great
+bell of St.-Maurice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.  SACRILEGE!
+
+
+M. de Montsoreau, Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur almost rose from his seat
+in his astonishment.
+
+"What!  No letters?" he cried, a hand on either arm of the chair.
+
+The Magistrates stared, one and all.  "No letters?" they muttered.
+
+And "No letters?" the Provost chimed in more faintly.
+
+Count Hannibal looked smiling round the Council table.  He alone was
+unmoved.
+
+"No," he said.  "I bear none."
+
+M. de Montsoreau, who, travel-stained and in his corselet, had the second
+place of honour at the foot of the table, frowned.
+
+"But, M. le Comte," he said, "my instructions from Monsieur were to
+proceed to carry out his Majesty's will in co-operation with you, who, I
+understood, would bring letters _de par le Roi_."
+
+"I had letters," Count Hannibal answered negligently.  "But on the way I
+mislaid them."
+
+"Mislaid them?" Montsoreau cried, unable to believe his ears; while the
+smaller dignitaries of the city, the magistrates and churchmen who sat on
+either side of the table, gaped open-mouthed.  It was incredible!  It was
+unbelievable!  Mislay the King's letters!  Who had ever heard of such a
+thing?
+
+"Yes, I mislaid them.  Lost them, if you like it better."
+
+"But you jest!" the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in his
+chair.  He was a man more highly named for address than courage; and,
+like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap.  "You
+jest, surely, Monsieur!  Men do not lose his Majesty's letters, by the
+way."
+
+"When they contain his Majesty's will, no," Tavannes answered, with a
+peculiar smile.
+
+"You imply, then?"
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders, but had not answered when Bigot
+entered and handed him his sweetmeat box; he paused to open it and select
+a prune.  He was long in selecting; but no change of countenance led any
+of those at the table to suspect that inside the lid of the box was a
+message--a scrap of paper informing him that Montsoreau had left fifty
+spears in the suburb without the Saumur gate, besides those whom he had
+brought openly into the town.  Tavannes read the note slowly while he
+seemed to be choosing his fruit.  And then--
+
+"Imply?" he answered.  "I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau."
+
+"But--"
+
+"But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which he
+does not mean to be carried out.  There are things which start up before
+the eye," Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on the table,
+"and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter are the more
+important.  You, better than I, M. de Montsoreau, know that the King in
+the Gallery at the Louvre is one, and in his closet is another."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that being so--"
+
+"You do not mean to carry the letters into effect?"
+
+"Had I the letters, certainly, my friend.  I should be bound by them.  But
+I took good care to lose them," Tavannes added naively.  "I am no fool."
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"However," Count Hannibal continued, with an airy gesture, "that is my
+affair.  If you, M. de Montsoreau, feel inclined, in spite of the absence
+of my letters, to carry yours into effect, by all means do so--after
+midnight of to-day."
+
+M. de Montsoreau breathed hard.  "And why," he asked, half sulkily and
+half ponderously, "after midnight only, M. le Comte?"
+
+"Merely that I may be clear of all suspicion of having lot or part in the
+matter," Count Hannibal answered pleasantly.  "After midnight of to-night
+by all means do as you please.  Until midnight, by your leave, we will be
+quiet."
+
+The Lieutenant-Governor moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear--which
+Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind--that he might be disowned
+if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his
+self-importance.  He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had
+been, he knew.  Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the
+notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots
+to ransom--a notion which, in spite of everything, was to bear good fruit
+for Angers--began to form in his mind.  The plan suited him: it left him
+free to face either way, and it would fill his pockets more genteelly
+than would open robbery.  On the other hand, he would offend his brother
+and the fanatical party, with whom he commonly acted.  They were looking
+to see him assert himself.  They were looking to hear him declare
+himself.  And--
+
+Harshly Count Hannibal's voice broke in on his thoughts; harshly, a
+something sinister in its tone.
+
+"Where is your brother?" he said.  And it was evident that he had not
+noted his absence until then.  "My lord's Vicar of all people should be
+here!" he continued, leaning forward and looking round the table.  His
+brow was stormy.
+
+Lescot squirmed under his eye; Thuriot turned pale and trembled.  It was
+one of the canons of St.-Maurice, who at length took on himself to
+answer.
+
+"His lordship requested, M. le Comte," he ventured, "that you would
+excuse him.  His duties--"
+
+"Is he ill?"
+
+"He--"
+
+"Is he ill, sirrah?" Tavannes roared.  And while all bowed before the
+lightning of his eye, no man at the table knew what had roused the sudden
+tempest.  But Bigot knew, who stood by the door, and whose ear, keen as
+his master's, had caught the distant report of a musket shot.  "If he be
+not ill," Tavannes continued, rising and looking round the table in
+search of signs of guilt, "and there be foul play here, and he the
+player, the Bishop's own hand shall not save him!  By Heaven it shall
+not!  Nor yours!" he continued, looking fiercely at Montsoreau.  "Nor
+your master's!"
+
+The Lieutenant-Governor sprang to his feet.  "M. le Comte," he stammered,
+"I do not understand this language!  Nor this heat, which may be real or
+not!  All I say is, if there be foul play here--"
+
+"If!" Tavannes retorted.  "At least, if there be, there be gibbets too!
+And I see necks!" he added, leaning forward.  "Necks!"  And then, with a
+look of flame, "Let no man leave this table until I return," he cried,
+"or he will have to deal with me.  Nay," he continued, changing his tone
+abruptly, as the prudence, which never entirely left him--and perhaps the
+remembrance of the other's fifty spearmen--sobered him in the midst of
+his rage, "I am hasty.  I mean not you, M. de Montsoreau!  Ride where you
+will; ride with me, if you will, and I will thank you.  Only remember,
+until midnight Angers is mine!"
+
+He was still speaking when he moved from the table, and, leaving all
+staring after him, strode down the room.  An instant he paused on the
+threshold and looked back; then he passed out, and clattered down the
+stone stairs.  His horse and riders were waiting, but, his foot in the
+stirrup, he stayed for a word with Bigot.
+
+"Is it so?" he growled.
+
+The Norman did not speak, but pointed towards the Place Ste.-Croix,
+whence an occasional shot made answer for him.
+
+In those days the streets of the Black City were narrow and crooked,
+overhung by timber houses, and hampered by booths; nor could Tavannes
+from the old Town Hall--now abandoned--see the Place Ste.-Croix.  But
+that he could cure.  He struck spurs to his horse, and, followed by his
+ten horsemen, he clattered noisily down the paved street.  A dozen groups
+hurrying the same way sprang panic-stricken to the walls, or saved
+themselves in doorways.  He was up with them, he was beyond them!  Another
+hundred yards, and he would see the Place.
+
+And then, with a cry of rage, he drew rein a little, discovering what was
+before him.  In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner, borne on
+two poles, was lurching towards him.  It was moving in the van of a dark
+procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a crowd of devout,
+filled the street from wall to wall.  They were chanting one of the
+penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown the uproar in the Place
+beyond them.
+
+They made no way, and Count Hannibal swore furiously, suspecting
+treachery.  But he was no madman, and at the moment the least reflection
+would have sent him about to seek another road.  Unfortunately, as he
+hesitated a man sprang with a gesture of warning to his horse's head and
+seized it; and Tavannes, mistaking the motive of the act, lost his self-
+control.  He struck the fellow down, and, with a reckless word, rode
+headlong into the procession, shouting to the black robes to make way,
+make way!  A cry, nay, a shriek of horror, answered him and rent the air.
+And in a minute the thing was done.  Too late, as the Bishop's Vicar,
+struck by his horse, fell screaming under its hoofs--too late, as the
+consecrated vessels which he had been bearing rolled in the mud, Tavannes
+saw that they bore the canopy and the Host!
+
+He knew what he had done, then.  Before his horse's iron shoes struck the
+ground again, his face--even his face--had lost its colour.  But he knew
+also that to hesitate now, to pause now, was to be torn in pieces; for
+his riders, seeing that which the banner had veiled from him, had not
+followed him, and he was alone, in the middle of brandished fists and
+weapons.  He hesitated not a moment.  Drawing a pistol, he spurred
+onwards, his horse plunging wildly among the shrieking priests; and
+though a hundred hands, hands of acolytes, hands of shaven monks,
+clutched at his bridle or gripped his boot, he got clear of them.  Clear,
+carrying with him the memory of one face seen an instant amid the crowd,
+one face seen, to be ever remembered--the face of Father Pezelay, white,
+evil, scarred, distorted by wicked triumph.
+
+Behind him, the thunder of "Sacrilege!  Sacrilege!" rose to Heaven, and
+men were gathering.  In front the crowd which skirmished about the inn
+was less dense, and, ignorant of the thing that had happened in the
+narrow street, made ready way for him, the boldest recoiling before the
+look on his face.  Some who stood nearest to the inn, and had begun to
+hurl stones at the window and to beat on the doors--which had only the
+minute before closed on Badelon and his prisoners--supposed that he had
+his riders behind him; and these fled apace.  But he knew better even
+than they the value of time; he pushed his horse up to the gates, and
+hammered them with his boot while be kept his pistol-hand towards the
+Place and the cathedral, watching for the transformation which he knew
+would come!
+
+And come it did; on a sudden, in a twinkling!  A white-faced monk, frenzy
+in his eyes, appeared in the midst of the crowd.  He stood and tore his
+garments before the people, and, stooping, threw dust on his head.  A
+second and a third followed his example; then from a thousand throats the
+cry of "Sacrilege!  Sacrilege!" rolled up, while clerks flew wildly
+hither and thither shrieking the tale, and priests denied the Sacraments
+to Angers until it should purge itself of the evil thing.
+
+By that time Count Hannibal had saved himself behind the great gates, by
+the skin of his teeth.  The gates had opened to him in time.  But none
+knew better than he that Angers had no gates thick enough, nor walls of a
+height, to save him for many hours from the storm he had let loose!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.  THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS.
+
+
+But that only the more roused the devil in the man; that, and the
+knowledge that he had his own headstrong act to thank for the position.
+He looked on the panic-stricken people who, scared by the turmoil
+without, had come together in the courtyard, wringing their hands and
+chattering; and his face was so dark and forbidding that fear of him took
+the place of all other fear, and the nearest shrank from contact with
+him.  On any other entering as he had entered, they would have hailed
+questions; they would have asked what was amiss, and if the city were
+rising, and where were Bigot and his men.  But Count Hannibal's eye
+struck curiosity dumb.  When he cried from his saddle, "Bring me the
+landlord!" the trembling man was found, and brought, and thrust forward
+almost without a word.
+
+"You have a back gate?" Tavannes said, while the crowd leaned forward to
+catch his words.
+
+"Yes, my lord," the man faltered.
+
+"Into the street which leads to the ramparts?"
+
+"Ye-yes, my lord."
+
+"Then"--to Badelon--"saddle!  You have five minutes.  Saddle as you never
+saddled before," he continued in a low tone, "or--"  His tongue did not
+finish the threat, but his hand waved the man away.  "For you"--he held
+Tignonville an instant with his lowering eye--"and the preaching fool
+with you, get arms and mount!  You have never played aught but the woman
+yet; but play me false now, or look aside but a foot from the path I bid
+you take, and you thwart me no more, Monsieur!  And you, Madame," he
+continued, turning to the Countess, who stood bewildered at one of the
+doors, the Provost's daughter clinging and weeping about her, "you have
+three minutes to get your women to horse!  See you, if you please, that
+they take no longer!"
+
+She found her voice with difficulty.  "And this child?" she said.  "She
+is in my care."
+
+"Bring her," he muttered with a scowl of impatience.  And then, raising
+his voice as he turned on the terrified gang of hostlers and inn servants
+who stood gaping round him, "Go help!" he thundered.  "Go help!  And
+quickly!" he added, his face growing a shade darker as a second bell
+began to toll from a neighbouring tower, and the confused babel in the
+Place Ste.-Croix settled into a dull roar of "_Sacrilege_!
+_sacrilege_."--"Hasten!"
+
+Fortunately it had been his first intention to go to the Council attended
+by the whole of his troop; and eight horses stood saddled in the stalls.
+Others were hastily pulled out and bridled, and the women were mounted.
+La Tribe, at a look from Tavannes, took behind him the Provost's
+daughter, who was helpless with terror.  Between the suddenness of the
+alarm, the uproar without, and the panic within, none but a man whose
+people served him at a nod and dreaded his very gesture could have got
+his party mounted in time.  Javette would fain have swooned, but she
+dared not.  Tignonville would fain have questioned, but he shrank from
+the venture.  The Countess would fain have said something, but she forced
+herself to obey and no more.  Even so the confusion in the courtyard, the
+mingling of horses and men and trappings and saddle-bags, would have made
+another despair; but wherever Count Hannibal, seated in his saddle in the
+middle, turned his face, chaos settled into a degree of order, servants,
+ceasing to listen to the yells and cries outside, ran to fetch, women
+dropped cloaks from the gallery, and men loaded muskets and strapped on
+bandoliers.
+
+Until at last--but none knew what those minutes of suspense cost him--he
+saw all mounted, and, pistol in hand, shepherded them to the back gates.
+As he did so he stooped for a few scowling words with Badelon, whom he
+sent to the van of the party: then he gave the word to open.  It was
+done; and even as Montsoreau's horsemen, borne on the bosom of a second
+and more formidable throng, swept raging into the already crowded square,
+and the cry went up for "a ram! a ram!" to batter in the gates, Tavannes,
+hurling his little party before him, dashed out at the back, and putting
+to flight a handful of rascals who had wandered to that side, cantered
+unmolested down the lane to the ramparts.  Turning eastward at the foot
+of the frowning Castle, he followed the inner side of the wall in the
+direction of the gate by which he had entered the preceding evening.
+
+To gain this his party had to pass the end of the Rue Toussaint, which
+issues from the Place Ste.-Croix and runs so straight that the mob
+seething in front of the inn had only to turn their heads to see them.
+The danger incurred at this point was great; for a party as small as
+Tavannes' and encumbered with women would have had no chance if attacked
+within the walls.
+
+Count Hannibal knew it.  But he knew also that the act which he had
+committed rendered the north bank of the Loire impossible for him.
+Neither King nor Marshal, neither Charles of Valois nor Gaspard of
+Tavannes, would dare to shield him from an infuriated Church, a Church
+too wise to forgive certain offences.  His one chance lay in reaching the
+southern bank of the Loire--roughly speaking, the Huguenot bank--and
+taking refuge in some town, Rochelle or St. Jean d'Angely, where the
+Huguenots were strong, and whence he might take steps to set himself
+right with his own side.
+
+But to cross the great river which divides France into two lands widely
+differing he must leave the city by the east gate; for the only bridge
+over the Loire within forty miles of Angers lay eastward from the town,
+at Ponts de Ce, four miles away.  To this gate, therefore, past the Rue
+Toussaint, he whirled his party daringly; and though the women grew pale
+as the sounds of riot broke louder on the ear, and they discovered that
+they were approaching instead of leaving the danger--and though
+Tignonville for an instant thought him mad, and snatched at the
+Countess's rein--his men-at-arms, who knew him, galloped stolidly on,
+passed like clockwork the end of the street, and, reckless of the stream
+of persons hurrying in the direction of the alarm, heedless of the fright
+and anger their passage excited, pressed steadily on.  A moment and the
+gate through which they had entered the previous evening appeared before
+them.  And--a sight welcome to one of them--it was open.
+
+They were fortunate indeed, for a few seconds later they had been too
+late.  The alarm had preceded them.  As they dashed up, a man ran to the
+chains of the portcullis and tried to lower it.  He failed to do so at
+the first touch, and, quailing, fled from Badelon's levelled pistol.  A
+watchman on one of the bastions of the wall shouted to them to halt or he
+would fire: but the riders yelled in derision, and thundering through the
+echoing archway, emerged into the open, and saw, extended before them, in
+place of the gloomy vistas of the Black Town, the glory of the open
+country and the vine-clad hills, and the fields about the Loire yellow
+with late harvest.
+
+The women gasped their relief, and one or two who were most out of breath
+would have pulled up their horses and let them trot, thinking the danger
+at an end.  But a curt savage word from the rear set them flying again,
+and down and up and on again they galloped, driven forward by the iron
+hand which never relaxed its grip of them.  Silent and pitiless he
+whirled them before him until they were within a mile of the long Ponts
+de Ce--a series of bridges rather than one bridge--and the broad shallow
+Loire lay plain before them, its sandbanks grilling in the sun, and grey
+lines of willows marking its eyots.  By this time some of the women,
+white with fatigue, could only cling to their saddles with their hands;
+while others were red-hot, their hair unrolled, and the perspiration
+mingled with the dust on their faces.  But he who drove them had no pity
+for weakness in an emergency.  He looked back and saw, a half-mile behind
+them, the glitter of steel following hard on their heels: and "Faster!
+faster!" he cried, regardless of their prayers: and he beat the rearmost
+of the horses with his scabbard.  A waiting-woman shrieked that she
+should fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the
+instinct of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and
+toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the town
+about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that they
+might slacken speed.
+
+The bewilderment of the start had been so great that it was then only,
+when they found their feet on the first link of the bridge, that two of
+the party, the Countess and Tignonville, awoke to the fact that their
+faces were set southwards.  To cross the Loire in those days meant much
+to all: to a Huguenot, very much.  It chanced that these two rode on to
+the bridge side by side, and the memory of their last crossing--the
+remembrance that, on their journey north a month before, they had crossed
+it hand-in-hand with the prospect of passing their lives together, and
+with no faintest thought of the events which were to ensue, flashed into
+the mind of each of them.  It deepened the flush which exertion had
+brought to the woman's cheek, then left it paler than before.  A minute
+earlier she had been wroth with her old lover; she had held him
+accountable for the outbreak in the town and this hasty retreat; now her
+anger died as she looked and she remembered.  In the man, shallower of
+feeling and more alive to present contingencies, the uppermost emotion as
+he trod the bridge was one of surprise and congratulation.
+
+He could not at first believe in their good fortune.  "_Mon Dieu_!" he
+cried, "we are crossing!"  And then again in a lower tone, "We are
+crossing!  We are crossing!"  And he looked at her.
+
+It was impossible that she should not look back; that she who had ceased
+to be angry should not feel and remember; impossible that her answering
+glance should not speak to his heart.  Below them, as on that day a month
+earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going northward, the broad
+shallow river ran its course in the sunshine, its turbid currents
+gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and osier-beds.  To the eye,
+the landscape, save that the vintage was farther advanced and the harvest
+in part gathered in, was the same.  But how changed were their relations,
+their prospects, their hopes, who had then crossed the river
+hand-in-hand, planning a life to be passed together.
+
+The young man's rage boiled up at the thought.  Too vividly, too sharply
+it showed him the wrongs which he had suffered at the hands of the man
+who rode behind him, the man who even now drove him on and ordered him
+and insulted him.  He forgot that he might have perished in the general
+massacre if Count Hannibal had not intervened.  He forgot that Count
+Hannibal had spared him once and twice.  He laid on his enemy's shoulders
+the guilt of all, the blood of all: and, as quick on the thought of his
+wrongs and his fellows' wrongs followed the reflection that with every
+league they rode southwards the chance of requital grew, he cried again,
+and this time joyously--
+
+"We are crossing!  A little, and we shall be in our own land!"
+
+The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and
+southwards.
+
+"Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed.  "I smell the sea!"
+
+"Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath.  "It lies there!  And no more
+than thirty leagues from us!  With fresh horses we might see it in two
+days!"
+
+Badelon's voice broke in on them.  "Forward!" he cried, as the party
+reached the southern bank.  "_En avant_!"  And, obedient to the word, the
+little company, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of
+Ponts de Ce at a steady trot.  Nor was the Countess the only one whose
+face glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of
+the horses' hoofs that beat out "Home!"  Carlat's and Madame Carlat's
+also.  Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the
+Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with
+moistened eyes, cried "Comfort" to the scared and weeping girl who clung
+to his belt.  It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as if
+already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of Poitou
+sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride on and on
+and on until the scenes of home arose about them.  For them the sky had
+already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the sunshine a purity
+long unknown.
+
+Was it wonderful, when they had suffered so much on that northern bank?
+When their experience during the month had been comparable only with the
+direst nightmare?  Yet one among them, after the first impulse of relief
+and satisfaction, felt differently.  Tignonville's gorge rose against the
+sense of compulsion, of inferiority.  To be driven forward after this
+fashion, whether he would or no, to be placed at the back of every base-
+born man-at-arms, to have no clearer knowledge of what had happened or of
+what was passing, or of the peril from which they fled, than the women
+among whom he rode--these things kindled anew the sullen fire of hate.
+North of the Loire there had been some excuse for his inaction under
+insult; he had been in the man's country and power.  But south of the
+Loire, within forty leagues of Huguenot Niort, must he still suffer,
+still be supine?
+
+His rage was inflamed by a disappointment he presently underwent.  Looking
+back as they rode clear of the wooden houses of Ponts de Ce, he missed
+Tavannes and several of his men; and he wondered if Count Hannibal had
+remained on his own side of the river.  It seemed possible; and in that
+event La Tribe and he and Carlat might deal with Badelon and the four who
+still escorted them.  But when he looked back a minute later, Tavannes
+was within sight, following the party with a stern face; and not Tavannes
+only.  Bigot, with two of the ten men who hitherto had been missing, was
+with him.
+
+It was clear, however, that they brought no good news, for they had
+scarcely ridden up before Count Hannibal cried, "Faster! faster!" in his
+harshest voice, and Bigot urged the horses to a quicker trot.  Their
+course lay almost parallel with the Loire in the direction of Beaupreau;
+and Tignonville began to fear that Count Hannibal intended to recross the
+river at Nantes, where the only bridge below Angers spanned the stream.
+With this in view it was easy to comprehend his wish to distance his
+pursuers before he recrossed.
+
+The Countess had no such thought.  "They must be close upon us!" she
+murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.
+
+"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly.  "If we knew what had
+happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, Madame.  For
+that matter, I know what I wish he would do.  And our heads are set for
+it."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.
+
+"For Vrillac?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale.  "If he would.  He
+would be safe there!"
+
+"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation.  And he looked
+at her askance.
+
+He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his
+brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that
+they were in sympathy.  And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and
+noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion,
+and retired more darkly into himself.  The downfall of his plan for
+dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan
+dependent on the submission of Angers--his disappointment in this might
+have roused the worst passions of a better man.  But there was in this
+man a pride on a level at least with his other passions: and to bear
+himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love
+him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his
+rage.
+
+When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and
+six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the
+rear.  On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called
+over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, Monsieur, _en avant_!" and
+sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour,
+Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his
+heart.
+
+Trot, trot!  Trot, trot!  Through a country which had lost its smiling
+wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they
+left the Loire behind them.  Trot, trot!  Trot, trot!--for ever, it
+seemed to some.  Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were
+little better.  The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the
+Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of
+her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have
+been expected.  At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they
+had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and
+Badelon, drawing rein, cried--
+
+"Beaupreau, Madame!  We stay an hour!"
+
+It was six o'clock.  They had ridden some hours without a break.  With
+sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles,
+while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and
+hobbled the horses that they might feed.  The hour passed rapidly, and
+when it had passed Badelon was inexorable.  There was wailing when he
+gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this
+dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers.  But Badelon
+said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it
+pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and
+jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the
+darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow
+plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced.
+Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely
+journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly.  When they at last
+unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson,
+they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.  THE ORDEAL BY STEEL.
+
+
+The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they
+alighted, dead weary.  The men, when they had cared for the horses,
+followed the example; for Badelon would suffer no fire.  In less than
+half an hour, a sentry who stood on guard at the edge of the wood, and
+Tignonville and La Tribe, who talked in low voices with their backs
+against a tree, were the only persons who remained awake, with the
+exception of the Countess.  Carlat had made a couch for her, and screened
+it with cloaks from the wind and the eye; for the moon had risen and
+where the trees stood sparsest its light flooded the soil with pools of
+white.  But Madame had not yet retired to her bed.  The two men, whose
+voices reached her, saw her from time to time moving restlessly to and
+fro between the road and the little encampment.  Presently she came and
+stood over them.
+
+"He led His people out of the wilderness," La Tribe was saying; "out of
+the trouble of Paris, out of the trouble of Angers, and always, always
+southward.  If you do not in this, Monsieur, see His finger--"
+
+"And Angers?" Tignonville struck in, with a faint sneer.  "Has He led
+that out of trouble?  A day or two ago you would risk all to save it, my
+friend.  Now, with your back safely turned on it, you think all for the
+best."
+
+"We did our best," the minister answered humbly.  "From the day we met in
+Paris we have been but instruments."
+
+"To save Angers?"
+
+"To save a remnant."
+
+On a sudden the Countess raised her hand.  "Do you not hear horses,
+Monsieur?" she cried.  She had been listening to the noises of the night,
+and had paid little heed to what the two were saying.
+
+"One of ours moved," Tignonville answered listlessly.  "Why do you not
+lie down, Madame?"
+
+Instead of answering, "Whither is he going?" she asked.  "Do you know?"
+
+"I wish I did know," the young man answered peevishly.  "To Niort, it may
+be.  Or presently he will double back and recross the Loire."
+
+"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said.  "The direction
+is rather that of Rochelle.  God grant we be bound thither!"
+
+"Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the darkness.
+"Can it be to Vrillac he is going?"
+
+The minister shook his head.
+
+"Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice.  "We should
+be safe there.  And he would be safe."
+
+"Safe?" echoed a fourth and deeper voice.  And out of the darkness beside
+them loomed a tall figure.
+
+The minister looked and leapt to his feet.  Tignonville rose more slowly.
+
+The voice was Tavannes'.  "And where am I to be safe?" he repeated
+slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amusement in his tone.
+
+"At Vrillac!" she cried.  "In my house, Monsieur!"
+
+He was silent a moment.  Then, "Your house, Madame?  In which direction
+is it, from here?"
+
+"Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness
+and emotion and hope.  "Westwards, Monsieur--on the sea.  The causeway
+from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred."
+
+"Westwards?  And how far westwards?"
+
+Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness,
+the same anxiety, which spoke in hers.  Nor was Count Hannibal's ear deaf
+to it.
+
+"Through Challans," he said, "thirteen leagues."
+
+"From Clisson?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."
+
+"And by Commequiers less," the Countess cried.
+
+"No, it is a worse road," Tignonville answered quickly; "and longer in
+time."
+
+"But we came--"
+
+"At our leisure, Madame.  The road is by Challans, if we wish to be there
+quickly."
+
+"Ah!" Count Hannibal said.  In the darkness it was impossible to see his
+face or mark how he took it.  "But being there, I have few men."
+
+"I have forty will come at call," she cried with pride.  "A word to them,
+and in four hours or a little more--"
+
+"They would outnumber mine by four to one," Count Hannibal answered
+coldly, dryly, in a voice like ice-water flung in their faces.  "Thank
+you, Madame; I understand.  To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not
+ride it at present."  And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from
+them.
+
+He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle of
+a broad patch of moonlight, and touched his arm.  He wheeled swiftly, his
+hand halfway to his hilt.  Then he saw who it was.
+
+"Ah," he said, "I had forgotten, Madame.  You have come--"
+
+"No!" she cried passionately; and standing before him she shook back the
+hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes.  "You owe me no blow
+to-day.  You have paid me, Monsieur.  You have struck me already, and
+foully, like a coward.  Do you remember," she continued rapidly, "the
+hour after our marriage, and what you said to me?  Do you remember what
+you told me?  And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our
+interest and where our foes'?  You trusted me then!  What have I done
+that you now dare--ay, dare, Monsieur," she repeated fearlessly, her face
+pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, "to insult me?  That you
+treat me as--Javette?  That you deem me capable of _that_?  Of luring you
+into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was mine, of--"
+
+"Treating me as I have treated others."
+
+"You have said it!" she cried.  She could not herself understand why his
+distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was
+gone.  "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be
+removed.  I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in her
+excitement, "so you had thought me what I am.  But now you will do well
+to watch me!  You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side.  For were
+you there, and raised your hand against me--not that that touches me, but
+it will do--and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the
+tower at my word."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Ay, indeed!  And indeed, Monsieur!"
+
+Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.
+
+"And this is your new tone, Madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after a
+pregnant pause.  "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change
+in you?"
+
+"No!" she cried.
+
+"Yes," he said.  And, despite herself, she flinched before the grimness
+of his tone.  "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not
+change.  That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same to
+me.  That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in
+the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels!  I
+go to Vrillac--"
+
+"You--go?" she cried.  "You go?"
+
+"I go," he repeated, "to-morrow.  And among your own people I will see
+what language you will hold.  While you were in my power I spared you.
+Now that you are in your own land, now that you lift your hand against
+me, I will show you of what make I am.  If blows will not tame you, I
+will try that will suit you less.  Ay, you wince, Madame!  You had done
+well had you thought twice before you threatened, and thrice before you
+took in hand to scare Tavannes with a parcel of clowns and fisherfolk.  To-
+morrow, to Vrillac and your duty!  And one word more, Madame," he
+continued, turning back to her truculently when he had gone some paces
+from her.  "If I find you plotting with your lover by the way I will hang
+not you, but him.  I have spared him a score of times; but I know him,
+and I do not trust him."
+
+"Nor me," she said, and with a white, set face she looked at him in the
+moonlight.  "Had you not better hang me now?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Lest I do you an injury!" she cried with passion; and she raised her
+hand and pointed northward.  "Lest I kill you some night, Monsieur!  I
+tell you, a thousand men on your heels are less dangerous than the woman
+at your side--if she hate you."
+
+"Is it so?" he cried.  His hand flew to his hilt; his dagger flashed out.
+But she did not move, did not flinch, only she set her teeth; and her
+eyes, fascinated by the steel, grew wider.
+
+His hand sank slowly.  He held the weapon to her, hilt foremost; she took
+it mechanically.
+
+"You think yourself brave enough to kill me, do you?" he sneered.  "Then
+take this, and strike, if you dare.  Take it--strike, Madame!  It is
+sharp, and my arms are open."  And he flung them wide, standing within a
+pace of her.  "Here, above the collar-bone, is the surest for a weak
+hand.  What, afraid?" he continued, as, stiffly clutching the weapon
+which he had put into her hand, she glared at him, trembling and
+astonished.  "Afraid, and a Vrillac!  Afraid, and 'tis but one blow!  See,
+my arms are open.  One blow home, and you will never lie in them.  Think
+of that.  One blow home, and you may lie in his.  Think of that!  Strike,
+then, Madame," he went on, piling taunt on taunt, "if you dare, and if
+you hate me.  What, still afraid!  How shall I give you heart?  Shall I
+strike you?  It will not be the first time by ten.  I keep count, you
+see," he continued mockingly.  "Or shall I kiss you?  Ay, that may do.
+And it will not be against your will, either, for you have that in your
+hand will save you in an instant.  Even"--he drew a foot nearer--"now!
+Even--"  And he stooped until his lips almost touched hers.
+
+She sprang back.  "Oh, do not!" she cried.  "Oh, do not!"  And, dropping
+the dagger, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into weeping.
+
+He stooped coolly, and, after groping some time for the poniard, drew it
+from the leaves among which it had fallen.  He put it into the sheath,
+and not until he had done that did he speak.  Then it was with a sneer.
+
+"I have no need to fear overmuch," he said.  "You are a poor hater,
+Madame.  And poor haters make poor lovers.  'Tis his loss!  If you will
+not strike a blow for him, there is but one thing left.  Go, dream of
+him!"
+
+And, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, he turned on his heel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.  THE AMBUSH.
+
+
+The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one of
+those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat lands
+of Western Poitou.  The horses, looming gigantic through the fog, winced
+as the cold harness was girded on them.  The men hurried to and fro with
+saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and swore
+savagely.  The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or, being
+dragged up by force, shrieked wild, unfitting words, as they were driven
+to the horses.  The Countess looked on and listened, and shuddered,
+waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse.  She had gone during the last
+three weeks through much that was dreary, much that was hopeless; but the
+chill discomfort of this forced start, with tired horses and wailing
+women, would have darkened the prospect of home had there been no fear or
+threat to cloud it.
+
+He whose will compelled all stood a little apart and watched all, silent
+and gloomy.  When Badelon, after taking his orders and distributing some
+slices of black bread to be eaten in the saddle, moved off at the head of
+his troop, Count Hannibal remained behind, attended by Bigot and the
+eight riders who had formed the rearguard so far.  He had not approached
+the Countess since rising, and she had been thankful for it.  But now, as
+she moved away, she looked back and saw him still standing; she marked
+that he wore his corselet, and in one of those revulsions of
+feeling--which outrun man's reason--she who had tossed on her couch
+through half the night, in passionate revolt against the fate before her,
+took fire at his neglect and his silence; she resented on a sudden the
+distance he kept, and his scorn of her.  Her breast heaved, her colour
+came, involuntarily she checked her horse, as if she would return to him,
+and speak to him.  Then the Carlats and the others closed up behind her,
+Badelon's monotonous "Forward, Madame, _en avant_!" proclaimed the day's
+journey begun, and she saw him no more.
+
+Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog,
+with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in
+her mind.  The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with
+greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and
+battered resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse
+broken by a few hills.  These were little more than mounds, and for the
+most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which
+gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely.  Weird
+trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising
+in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers
+moved, weary phantoms in a clinging nightmare.  At a walk, at a trot,
+more often at a jaded amble, they pushed on behind Badelon's humped
+shoulders.  Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only
+those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes
+the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute
+or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and
+stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket
+of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines.  Some looked and saw these
+things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils
+of a flight from they knew not what.
+
+To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these.  On the contrary, he
+seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took
+things unheroically, he showed to advantage.  Avoiding the Countess and
+riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor
+did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and
+confirm Badelon in the way he was going.
+
+"We shall be at Lege by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le
+Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset.  By way of
+Challans!"
+
+And always Carlat answered, "Ay, by Challans, Monsieur, so be it!"
+
+He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them drag, a
+weary train, into the hamlet of Lege, where the road from Nantes to
+Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou.  An hour later Count
+Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes'
+parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to
+him.  The old man came.
+
+"Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly.
+
+"By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can.  We call
+it seven hours' riding from here."
+
+"And that route is the shortest?"
+
+"In time, M. le Comte, the road being better."
+
+Count Hannibal bent his brows.  "And the other way?" he said.
+
+"Is by Commequiers, my lord.  It is shorter in distance."
+
+"By how much?"
+
+"Two leagues.  But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame
+and the women--"
+
+"It would be longer?"
+
+The steward hesitated.  "I think so," he said slowly, his eyes wandering
+to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels of the village
+stood out naked and comfortless.  A low thicket of oaks sheltered the
+place from south-westerly gales.  On the other three sides it lay open.
+
+"Very good," Tavannes said curtly.  "Be ready to start in ten minutes.
+You will guide us."
+
+But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start,
+to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found.  To
+peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the
+hamlet proved equally fruitless.  The only person who had seen him since
+his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville; and he
+had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off--as he
+believed--by the Challans road.
+
+"Ahead of us?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in
+the direction of the fringe of trees.  "I did not see him take the road,
+but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last.
+Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound
+round the flank of the wood.  "When we are beyond that point, I think we
+shall see him."
+
+Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle,
+looked back the way he had come.  Half a mile away, two or three dots
+could be seen approaching across the plain.  He turned again.
+
+"You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.
+
+"Perfectly.  As well as Carlat."
+
+"Then lead the way, Monsieur, with Badelon.  And spare neither whip nor
+spur.  There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."
+
+Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of
+the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth.  A moment, and the main
+body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover
+the rear.  The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was
+closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than
+the trees faded out of sight behind them.  It was not wonderful that they
+could not see Carlat.  Objects a hundred paces from them were completely
+hidden.
+
+Trot, trot!  Trot, trot! through a grey world so featureless, so unreal
+that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to
+themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare.  A trot and then a walk,
+and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women
+bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the
+men swore at them.
+
+Ha!  La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans.  The
+Countess raised her head, and began to look about her.  There, should be
+a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or
+the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the
+great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier.  The mist hid all, but the
+knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to
+her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.
+
+At Challans they halted half an hour, and washed out the horses' mouths
+with water and a little _guignolet_--the spirit of the country.  A dose
+of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little after seven
+they began the last stage of the journey, through a landscape which even
+the mist could not veil from the eyes of love.  There rose the windmill
+of Soullans!  There the old dolmen, beneath which the grey wolf that ate
+the two children of Tornic had its lair.  For a mile back they had been
+treading my lady's land; they had only two more leagues to ride, and one
+of those was crumbling under each dogged footfall.  The salt flavour,
+which is new life to the shore-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated
+by them, now thinner, now more opaque; and almost they could hear the
+dull thunder of the Biscay waves falling on the rocks.
+
+Tignonville looked back at her and smiled.  She caught the look; she
+fancied that she understood it and his thoughts.  But her own eyes were
+moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was of
+strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped her.  For
+there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the fishing
+village began to rise from the dull inland level--hills green on the land
+side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island--she espied the
+wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood had told her
+beads.  Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the road she
+travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding among the
+hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway--and to her home.
+
+At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de
+Tignonville, she asked him what he thought of the steward's continued
+absence.
+
+"He must have outpaced us!" he answered, with an odd laugh.
+
+"But he must have ridden hard to do that."
+
+He reined back to her.  "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath.  "But
+look ahead, Madame, and see if we are expected!"
+
+"Expected?  How can we be expected?" she cried.  The colour rushed into
+her face.
+
+He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon's humped
+shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them.  Then, stooping towards
+her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he will have told
+them," he said.
+
+"Have told them?"
+
+"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."
+
+She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she
+understood, and her eyes grew hard.
+
+"Then why," she said, "did you say it was longer.  Had we been overtaken,
+Monsieur, we had had you to thank for it, it seems!"
+
+He bit his lip.  "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined.  "On the
+contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."
+
+"As unwelcome, perhaps!" she retorted.  "For what?"
+
+"Softly, Madame."
+
+"For what?" she repeated, refusing to lower her voice.  "Speak, Monsieur,
+if you please."  He had never seen her look at him in that way.
+
+"For the fact," he answered, stung by her look and tone, "that when you
+arrive you will find yourself mistress in your own house!  Is that
+nothing?"
+
+"You have called in my people?"
+
+"Carlat has done so, or should have," he answered.  "Henceforth," he
+continued, a ring of exultation in his voice, "it will go hard with M. le
+Comte, if he does not treat you better than he has treated you hitherto.
+That is all!"
+
+"You mean that it will go hard with him in any case?" she cried, her
+bosom rising and falling.
+
+"I mean, Madame--But there they are!  Good Carlat!  Brave Carlat!  He has
+done well!"
+
+"Carlat?"
+
+"Ay, there they are!  And you are mistress in your own land!  At last you
+are mistress, and you have me to thank for it!  See!"  And heedless in
+his exultation whether Badelon understood or not, he pointed to a place
+before them where the road wound between two low hills.  Over the green
+shoulder of one of these, a dozen bright points caught and reflected the
+last evening light; while as he spoke a man rose to his feet on the
+hillside above, and began to make signs to persons below.  A pennon, too,
+showed an instant over the shoulder, fluttered, and was gone.
+
+Badelon looked as they looked.  The next instant he uttered a low oath,
+and dragged his horse across the front of the party.
+
+"Pierre!" he cried to the man on his left, "ride for your life!  To my
+lord, and tell him we are ambushed!"  And as the trained soldier wheeled
+about and spurred away, the sacker of Rome turned a dark scowling face on
+Tignonville.  "If this be your work," he hissed, "we shall thank you for
+it in hell!  For it is where most of us will lie to-night!  They are
+Montsoreau's spears, and they have those with them are worse to deal with
+than themselves!"  Then in a different tone, and throwing off all
+disguise, "Men to the front!" he shouted.  "And you, Madame, to the rear
+quickly, and the women with you!  Now, men, forward, and draw!  Steady!
+Steady!  They are coming!"
+
+There was an instant of confusion, disorder, panic; horses jostling one
+another, women screaming and clutching at men, men shaking them off and
+forcing their way to the van.  Fortunately the enemy did not fall on at
+once, as Badelon expected, but after showing themselves in the mouth of
+the valley, at a distance of three hundred paces, hung for some reason
+irresolute.  This gave Badelon time to array his seven swords in front;
+but real resistance was out of the question, as he knew.  And to none
+seemed less in question than to Tignonville.
+
+When the truth, and what he had done, broke on the young man, he sat a
+moment motionless with horror.  It was only when Badelon had twice
+summoned him with opprobrious words that he awoke to the relief of
+action.  Even after that he hung an instant trying to meet the Countess's
+eyes, despair in his own; but it was not to be.  She had turned her head,
+and was looking back, as if thence only and not from him could help come.
+It was not to him she turned; and he saw it, and the justice of it.  And
+silent, grim, more formidable even than old Badelon, the veteran fighter,
+who knew all the tricks and shifts of the _melee_, he spurred to the
+flank of the line.
+
+"Now, steady!" Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning
+to move.  "Steady!  Ha!  Thank God, my lord!  My lord is coming!  Stand!
+Stand!"  The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the
+nick of time.  He stood in his stirrups and looked back.  Yes, Count
+Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men.  The odds
+were still desperate--for he brought but six--the enemy were still three
+to one.  But the thunder of his hoofs as he came up checked for a moment
+the enemy's onset; and before Montsoreau's people got started again Count
+Hannibal had ridden up abreast of the women, and the Countess, looking at
+him, knew that, desperate as was their strait, she had not looked behind
+in vain.  The glow of battle, the stress of the moment, had displaced the
+cloud from his face; the joy of the born fighter lightened in his eye.
+His voice rang clear and loud above the press.
+
+"Badelon! wait you and two with Madame!" he cried.  "Follow at fifty
+paces' distance, and, when we have broken them, ride through!  The others
+with me!  Now forward, men, and show your teeth!  A Tavannes!  A
+Tavannes!  A Tavannes!  We carry it yet!"
+
+And he dashed forward, leading them on, leaving the women behind; and
+down the sward to meet him, thundering in double line, came Montsoreau's
+men-at-arms, and with the men-at-arms, a dozen pale, fierce-eyed men in
+the Church's black, yelling the Church's curses.  Madame's heart grew
+sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing
+light a horse's length before his men--with only Tignonville beside him.
+
+She held her breath--would the shock never come?  If Badelon had not
+seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved.  And
+then, even as she moved, they met!  With yells and wild cries and a
+mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of
+fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of
+grapples hand-to-hand.  What happened, what was happening to any one, who
+it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who
+still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those
+on her right and on her left, she could not tell.  For Badelon dragged
+her on with whip and spur, and two horsemen--who obscured her
+view--galloped in front of her, and rode down bodily the only man who
+undertook to bar her passage.  She had a glimpse of that man's face, as
+his horse, struck in the act of turning, fell sideways on him; and she
+knew it, in its agony of terror, though she had seen it but once.  It was
+the face of the man whose eyes had sought hers from the steps of the
+church in Angers; the lean man in black, who had turned soldier of the
+Church--to his misfortune.
+
+Through?  Yes, through, the way was clear before them!  The fight with
+its screams and curses died away behind them.  The horses swayed and all
+but sank under them.  But Badelon knew it no time for mercy; iron-shod
+hoofs rang on the road behind, and at any moment the pursuers might be on
+their heels.  He flogged on until the cots of the hamlet appeared on
+either side of the way; on, until the road forked and the Countess with
+strange readiness cried "The left!"--on, until the beach appeared below
+them at the foot of a sharp pitch, and beyond the beach the slow heaving
+grey of the ocean.
+
+The tide was high.  The causeway ran through it, a mere thread lipped by
+the darkling waves, and at the sight a grunt of relief broke from
+Badelon.  For at the end of the causeway, black against the western sky,
+rose the gateway and towers of Vrillac; and he saw that, as the Countess
+had said, it was a place ten men could hold against ten hundred!
+
+They stumbled down the beach, reached the causeway and trotted along it;
+more slowly now, and looking back.  The other women had followed by hook
+or by crook, some crying hysterically, yet clinging to their horses and
+even urging them; and in a medley, the causeway clear behind them and no
+one following, they reached the drawbridge, and passed under the arch of
+the gate beyond.
+
+There friendly hands, Carlat's foremost, welcomed them and aided them to
+alight, and the Countess saw, as in a dream, the familiar scene, all
+unfamiliar: the gate, where she had played, a child, aglow with lantern-
+light and arms.  Men, whose rugged faces she had known in infancy, stood
+at the drawbridge chains and at the winches.  Others blew matches and
+handled primers, while old servants crowded round her, and women looked
+at her, scared and weeping.  She saw it all at a glance--the lights, the
+black shadows, the sudden glow of a match on the groining of the arch
+above.  She saw it, and turning swiftly, looked back the way she had
+come; along the dusky causeway to the low, dark shore, which night was
+stealing quickly from their eyes.  She clasped her hands.
+
+"Where is Badelon?" she cried.  "Where is he?  Where is he?"
+
+One of the men who had ridden before her answered that he had turned
+back.
+
+"Turned back!" she repeated.  And then, shading her eyes, "Who is
+coming?" she asked, her voice insistent.  "There is some one coming.  Who
+is it?  Who is it?"
+
+Two were coming out of the gloom, travelling slowly and painfully along
+the causeway.  One was La Tribe, limping; the other a rider, slashed
+across the forehead, and sobbing curses.
+
+"No more!" she muttered.  "Are there no more?"
+
+The minister shook his head.  The rider wiped the blood from his eyes,
+and turned up his face that he might see the better.  But he seemed to be
+dazed, and only babbled strange words in a strange _patois_.
+
+She stamped her foot in passion.  "More lights!" she cried.  "Lights!  How
+can they find their way?  And let six men go down the _digue_, and meet
+them.  Will you let them be butchered between the shore and this?"
+
+But Carlat, who had not been able to collect more than a dozen men, shook
+his head; and before she could repeat the order, sounds of battle,
+shrill, faint, like cries of hungry seagulls, pierced the darkness which
+shrouded the farther end of the causeway.  The women shrank inward over
+the threshold, while Carlat cried to the men at the chains to be ready,
+and to some who stood at loopholes above, to blow up their matches and
+let fly at his word.  And then they all waited, the Countess foremost,
+peering eagerly into the growing darkness.  They could see nothing.
+
+A distant scuffle, an oath, a cry, silence!  The same, a little nearer, a
+little louder, followed this time, not by silence, but by the slow tread
+of a limping horse.  Again a rush of feet, the clash of steel, a scream,
+a laugh, all weird and unreal, issuing from the night; then out of the
+darkness into the light, stepping slowly with hanging head, moved a
+horse, bearing on its back a man--or was it a man?--bending low in the
+saddle, his feet swinging loose.  For an instant the horse and the man
+seemed to be alone, a ghostly pair; then at their heels came into view
+two figures, skirmishing this way and that; and now coming nearer, and
+now darting back into the gloom.  One, a squat figure, stooping low,
+wielded a sword with two hands; the other covered him with a half-pike.
+And then beyond these--abruptly as it seemed--the night gave up to sight
+a swarm of dark figures pressing on them and after them, driving them
+before them.
+
+Carlat had an inspiration.  "Fire!" he cried; and four arquebuses poured
+a score of slugs into the knot of pursuers.  A man fell, another shrieked
+and stumbled, the rest gave back.  Only the horse came on spectrally,
+with hanging head and shining eyeballs, until a man ran out and seized
+its head, and dragged it, more by his strength than its own, over the
+drawbridge.  After it Badelon, with a gaping wound in his knee, and
+Bigot, bleeding from a dozen hurts, walked over the bridge, and stood on
+either side of the saddle, smiling foolishly at the man on the horse.
+
+"Leave me!" he muttered.  "Leave me!"  He made a feeble movement with his
+hand, as if it held a weapon; then his head sank lower.  It was Count
+Hannibal.  His thigh was broken, and there was a lance-head in his arm.
+The Countess looked at him, then beyond him, past him into the darkness.
+
+"Are there no more?" she whispered tremulously.  "No more?
+Tignonville--my--"
+
+Badelon shook his head.  The Countess covered her face and wept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.  WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?
+
+
+It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun
+rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle.
+The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its
+retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to
+sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the
+causeway.  The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the
+gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it
+through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at
+Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a
+nightmare.  But rub as he might, and stare as he might, the ugly outlines
+of the thing he had seen persisted--nay, grew sharper as the haze began
+to lift from the grey, slow-heaving floor of sea.  He called another man
+and bade him look.
+
+"What is it?" he said.  "D'you see, there?  Below the village?"
+
+"'Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had watched
+all night.  "God keep us from it."
+
+"A gibbet?"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"But what is it for?  What is it doing there?"
+
+"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man answered,
+stupidly practical.  And then other men came up, and stared at it and
+growled in their beards.  Presently there were eight or ten on the roof
+of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by-
+and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white
+flag in his hand.
+
+At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister.  "He understands things," he
+muttered, "and I misdoubt this.  And see," he cried after the messenger,
+"that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!"  Instinctively in the maiden
+home he reverted to the maiden title.
+
+The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose
+above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt before
+the gate.  Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La Tribe,
+after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low, misty shore
+and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the causeway, looked
+down and met the envoy's eyes.  For a moment no one spoke.  Only the men
+who had remained on the gateway, and had watched the stranger's coming,
+breathed hard.
+
+At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly, "for
+the lady of Vrillac.  Is she present?"
+
+"Give your message!" La Tribe replied.
+
+"It is for her ears only."
+
+"Do you want to enter?"
+
+"No!"  The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled.  He had
+the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and
+after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore
+no sword, though he was girded with a belt.  "No!" he repeated, "but if
+Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me--"
+
+"Madame has other fish to fry," Carlat blurted out.  "Do you think that
+she has naught to do but listen to messages from a gang of bandits?"
+
+"If she does not listen she will repent it all her life!" the fellow
+answered hardily.  "That is part of my message."
+
+There was a pause while La Tribe considered the matter.  In the end,
+"From whom do you come?" he asked.
+
+"From His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur," the envoy
+answered glibly, "and from my Lord Bishop of Angers, him assisting by his
+Vicar; and from others gathered lawfully, who will as lawfully depart if
+their terms are accepted.  Also from M. de Tignonville, a gentleman, I am
+told, of these parts, now in their hands and adjudged to die at sunset
+this day if the terms I bring be not accepted."
+
+There was a long silence on the gate.  The men looked down fixedly; not a
+feature of one of them moved, for no one was surprised.  "Wherefore is he
+to die?" La Tribe asked at last.
+
+"For good cause shown."
+
+"Wherefore?"
+
+"He is a Huguenot."
+
+The minister nodded.  "And the terms?" Carlat muttered.
+
+"Ay, the terms!" La Tribe repeated, nodding afresh.  "What are they?"
+
+"They are for Madame's ear only," the messenger made answer.
+
+"Then they will not reach it!" Carlat broke forth in wrath.  "So much for
+that!  And for yourself, see you go quickly before we make a target of
+you!"
+
+"Very well, I go," the envoy answered sullenly.  "But--"
+
+"But what?" La Tribe cried, gripping Carlat's shoulder to quiet him.  "But
+what?  Say what you have to say, man!  Speak out, and have done with it!'
+
+"I will say it to her and to no other."
+
+"Then you will not say it!" Carlat cried again.  "For you will not see
+her.  So you may go.  And the black fever in your vitals."
+
+"Ay, go!" La Tribe added more quietly.
+
+The man turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and moved off a dozen
+paces, watched by all on the gate with the same fixed attention.  But
+presently he paused; he returned.
+
+"Very well," he said, looking up with an ill grace.  "I will do my office
+here, if I cannot come to her.  But I hold also a letter from M. de
+Tignonville, and that I can deliver to no other hands than hers!"  He
+held it up as he spoke, a thin scrap of greyish paper, the fly-leaf of a
+missal perhaps.  "See!" he continued, "and take notice!  If she does not
+get this, and learns when it is too late that it was offered--"
+
+"The terms," Carlat growled impatiently.  "The terms!  Come to them!"
+
+"You will have them?" the man answered, nervously passing his tongue over
+his lips.  "You will not let me see her, or speak to her privately?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then hear them.  His Excellency is informed that one Hannibal de
+Tavannes, guilty of the detestable crime of sacrilege and of other gross
+crimes, has taken refuge here.  He requires that the said Hannibal de
+Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being done before
+sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M.
+de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac.  But if you
+refuse"--the man passed his eye along the line of attentive faces which
+fringed the battlement--"he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on
+the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of Vrillac to
+its farthest border!"
+
+There was a long silence on the gate.  Some, their gaze still fixed on
+him, moved their lips as if they chewed.  Others looked aside, met their
+fellows' eyes in a pregnant glance, and slowly returned to him.  But no
+one spoke.  At his back the flush of dawn was flooding the east, and
+spreading and waxing brighter.  The air was growing warm; the shore
+below, from grey, was turning green.
+
+In a minute or two the sun, whose glowing marge already peeped above the
+low hills of France, would top the horizon.
+
+The man, getting no answer, shifted his feet uneasily.  "Well," he cried,
+"what answer am I to take?"
+
+Still no one moved.
+
+"I've done my part.  Will no one give her the letter?" he cried.  And he
+held it up.  "Give me my answer, for I am going."
+
+"Take the letter!"  The words came from the rear of the group in a voice
+that startled all.  They turned, as though some one had struck them, and
+saw the Countess standing beside the hood which covered the stairs.  They
+guessed that she had heard all or nearly all; but the glory of the
+sunrise, shining full on her at that moment, lent a false warmth to her
+face, and life to eyes woefully and tragically set.  It was not easy to
+say whether she had heard or not.  "Take the letter," she repeated.
+
+Carlat looked helplessly over the parapet.
+
+"Go down!"
+
+He cast a glance at La Tribe, but he got none in return, and he was
+preparing to do her bidding when a cry of dismay broke from those who
+still had their eyes bent downwards.  The messenger, waving the letter in
+a last appeal, had held it too loosely; a light air, as treacherous, as
+unexpected, had snatched it from his hand, and bore it--even as the
+Countess, drawn by the cry, sprang to the parapet--fifty paces from him.
+A moment it floated in the air, eddying, rising, falling; then, light as
+thistledown, it touched the water and began to sink.
+
+The messenger uttered frantic lamentations, and stamped the causeway in
+his rage.  The Countess only looked, and looked, until the rippling crest
+of a baby wave broke over the tiny venture, and with its freight of
+tidings it sank from sight.
+
+The man, silent now, stared a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, 'tis fortunate it was his," he cried brutally, "and not His
+Excellency's, or my back had suffered!  And now," he added impatiently,
+"by your leave, what answer?"
+
+What answer?  Ah, God, what answer?  The men who leant on the parapet,
+rude and coarse as they were, felt the tragedy of the question and the
+dilemma, guessed what they meant to her, and looked everywhere save at
+her.
+
+What answer?  Which of the two was to live?  Which die--shamefully?
+Which?  Which?
+
+"Tell him--to come back--an hour before sunset," she muttered.
+
+They told him and he went; and one by one the men began to go too, and
+stole from the roof, leaving her standing alone, her face to the shore,
+her hands resting on the parapet.  The light breeze which blew off the
+land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the thin robe
+against her sunlit figure.  So had she stood a thousand times in old
+days, in her youth, in her maidenhood.  So in her father's time had she
+stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo her!  So had
+she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey to Paris!
+Thence had others watched her go with him.  The men remembered--remembered
+all; and one by one they stole shamefacedly away, fearing lest she should
+speak or turn tragic eyes on them.
+
+True, in their pity for her was no doubt of the end, or thought of the
+victim who must suffer--of Tavannes.  They, of Poitou, who had not been
+with him, knew nothing of him; they cared as little.  He was a northern
+man, a stranger, a man of the sword, who had seized her--so they heard--by
+the sword.  But they saw that the burden of choice was laid on her;
+there, in her sight and in theirs, rose the gibbet; and, clowns as they
+were, they discerned the tragedy of her _role_, play it as she might, and
+though her act gave life to her lover.
+
+When all had retired save three or four, she turned and saw these
+gathered at the head of the stairs in a ring about Carlat, who was
+addressing them in a low eager voice.  She could not catch a syllable,
+but a look hard and almost cruel flashed into her eyes as she gazed; and
+raising her voice she called the steward to her.
+
+"The bridge is up," she said, her tone hard, "but the gates?  Are they
+locked?"
+
+"Yes, Madame."
+
+"The wicket?"
+
+"No, not the wicket."  And Carlat looked another way.
+
+"Then go, lock it, and bring the keys to me!" she replied.  "Or stay!"
+Her voice grew harder, her eyes spiteful as a cat's.  "Stay, and be
+warned that you play me no tricks!  Do you hear?  Do you understand?  Or
+old as you are, and long as you have served us, I will have you thrown
+from this tower, with as little pity as Isabeau flung her gallants to the
+fishes.  I am still mistress here, never more mistress than this day.  Woe
+to you if you forget it."
+
+He blenched and cringed before her, muttering incoherently.
+
+"I know," she said, "I read you!  And now the keys.  Go, bring them to
+me!  And if by chance I find the wicket unlocked when I come down, pray,
+Carlat, pray!  For you will have need of prayers."
+
+He slunk away, the men with him; and she fell to pacing the roof
+feverishly.  Now and then she extended her arms, and low cries broke from
+her, as from a dumb creature in pain.  Wherever she looked, old memories
+rose up to torment her and redouble her misery.  A thing she could have
+borne in the outer world, a thing which might have seemed tolerable in
+the reeking air of Paris or in the gloomy streets of Angers wore here its
+most appalling aspect.  Henceforth, whatever choice she made, this home,
+where even in those troublous times she had known naught but peace, must
+bear a damning stain!  Henceforth this day and this hour must come
+between her and happiness, must brand her brow, and fix her with a deed
+of which men and women would tell while she lived!  Oh, God--pray?  Who
+said, pray?
+
+"I!"  And La Tribe with tears in his eyes held out the keys to her.  "I,
+Madame," he continued solemnly, his voice broken with emotion.  "For in
+man is no help.  The strongest man, he who rode yesterday a master of
+men, a very man of war in his pride and his valour--see him, now, and--"
+
+"Don't!" she cried, sharp pain in her voice.  "Don't!"  And she stopped
+him with her hand, her face averted.  After an interval, "You come from
+him?" she muttered faintly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is he--hurt to death, think you?"  She spoke low, and kept her face
+hidden from him.
+
+"Alas, no!" he answered, speaking the thought in his heart.  "The men who
+are with him seem confident of his recovery."
+
+"Do they know?"
+
+"Badelon has had experience."
+
+"No, no.  Do they know of this?" she cried.  "Of this!"  And she pointed
+with a gesture of loathing to the black gibbet on the farther strand.
+
+He shook his head.  "I think not," he muttered.  And after a moment, "God
+help you!" he added fervently.  "God help and guide you, Madame!"
+
+She turned on him suddenly, fiercely.  "Is that all you can do?" she
+cried.  "Is that all the help you can give?  You are a man.  Go down,
+lead them out; drive off these cowards who drain our life's blood, who
+trade on a woman's heart!  On them!  Do something, anything, rather than
+lie in safety here--here!"
+
+The minister shook his head sadly.  "Alas, Madame!" he said, "to sally
+were to waste life.  They outnumber us three to one.  If Count Hannibal
+could do no more than break through last night, with scarce a man
+unwounded--"
+
+"He had the women!"
+
+"And we have not him!"
+
+"He would not have left us!" she cried hysterically.
+
+"I believe it."
+
+"Had they taken me, do you think he would have lain behind walls?  Or
+skulked in safety here, while--while--"  Her voice failed her.
+
+He shook his head despondently.
+
+"And that is all you can do?" she cried, and turned from him, and to him
+again, extending her arms, in bitter scorn.  "All you will do?  Do you
+forget that twice he spared your life?  That in Paris once, and once in
+Angers, he held his hand?  That always, whether he stood or whether he
+fled, he held himself between us and harm?  Ay, always?  And who will now
+raise a hand for him?  Who?"
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Who?  Who?  Had he died in the field," she continued, her voice shaking
+with grief, her hands beating the parapet--for she had turned from
+him--"had he fallen where he rode last night, in the front, with his face
+to the foe, I had viewed him tearless, I had deemed him happy!  I had
+prayed dry-eyed for him who--who spared me all these days and weeks!  Whom
+I robbed and he forgave me!  Whom I tempted, and he forbore me!  Ay, and
+who spared not once or twice him for whom he must now--he must now--"  And
+unable to finish the sentence she beat her hands again and passionately
+on the stones.
+
+"Heaven knows, Madame," the minister cried vehemently, "Heaven knows, I
+would advise you if I could."
+
+"Why did he wear his corselet?" she wailed, as if she had not heard him.
+"Was there no spear could reach his breast, that he must come to this?  No
+foe so gentle he would spare him this?  Or why did _he_ not die with me
+in Paris when we waited?  In another minute death might have come and
+saved us this."
+
+With the tears running down his face he tried to comfort her.
+
+"Man that is a shadow," he said, "passeth away--what matter how?  A
+little while, a very little while, and we shall pass!"
+
+"With his curse upon us!" she cried.  And, shuddering, she pressed her
+hands to her eyes to shut out the sight her fancy pictured.
+
+He left her for a while, hoping that in solitude she might regain control
+of herself.  When he returned he found her seated, and outwardly more
+composed; her arms resting on the parapet-wall, her eyes bent steadily on
+the long stretch of hard sand which ran northward from the village.  By
+that route her lover had many a time come to her; there she had ridden
+with him in the early days; and that way they had started for Paris on
+such a morning and at such an hour as this, with sunshine about them, and
+larks singing hope above the sand-dunes, and with wavelets creaming to
+the horses' hoofs!
+
+Of all which La Tribe, a stranger, knew nothing.  The rapt gaze, the
+unchanging attitude only confirmed his opinion of the course she would
+adopt.  He was thankful to find her more composed; and in fear of such a
+scene as had already passed between them, he stole away again.  He
+returned by-and-by, but with the greatest reluctance, and only because
+Carlat's urgency would take no refusal.
+
+He came this time to crave the key of the wicket, explaining that--rather
+to satisfy his own conscience and the men than with any hope of
+success--he proposed to go halfway along the causeway, and thence by
+signs invite a conference.
+
+"It is just possible," he added, hesitating--he feared nothing so much as
+to raise hopes in her--"that by the offer of a money ransom, Madame--"
+
+"Go," she said, without turning her head.  "Offer what you please.
+But"--bitterly--"have a care of them!  Montsoreau is very like Montereau!
+Beware of the bridge!"
+
+He went and came again in half an hour.  Then, indeed, though she had
+spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first sound
+of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face questioned
+him.  He shook his head.
+
+"There is a priest," he said in broken tones, "with them, whom God will
+judge.  It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity."
+
+"You bring nothing from--him?"
+
+"They will not suffer him to write again."
+
+"You did not see him?"
+
+"No."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.  AGAINST THE WALL.
+
+
+In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most
+convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man
+sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his eyes
+seemed glued.  The room, which formed part of the oldest block of the
+chateau, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed two
+other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which
+Bigot--for he it was--peered so persistently.  But the larger windows
+looked southwards, across the bay--at this moment the noon-high sun was
+pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held Bigot's
+gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere.  The loophole
+commanded the causeway leading shorewards; through it the Norman could
+see who came and went, and even the cross-beam of the ugly object which
+rose where the causeway touched the land.
+
+On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured leg
+protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage.  His eyes were bright with
+fever, and his untended beard and straggling hair heightened the wildness
+of his aspect.  But he was in possession of his senses; and as his gaze
+passed from Bigot at the window to the old Free Companion, who sat on a
+stool beside him, engaged in shaping a piece of wood into a splint, an
+expression almost soft crept into his harsh face.
+
+"Old fool!" he said.  And his voice, though changed, had not lost all its
+strength and harshness.  "Did the Constable need a splint when you laid
+him under the tower at Gaeta?"
+
+The old man lifted his eyes from his task, and glanced through the
+nearest window.
+
+"It is long from noon to night," he said quietly, "and far from cup to
+lip, my lord!"
+
+"It would be if I had two legs," Tavannes answered, with a grimace, half-
+snarl, half-smile.  "As it is--where is that dagger?  It leaves me every
+minute."
+
+It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground.  Badelon took it up, and
+set it on the bed within reach of his master's hand.
+
+Bigot swore fiercely.  "It would be farther still," he growled, "if you
+would be guided by me, my lord.  Give me leave to bar the door, and
+'twill be long before these fisher clowns force it.  Badelon and I--"
+
+"Being in your full strength," Count Hannibal murmured cynically.
+
+"Could hold it.  We have strength enough for that," the Norman boasted,
+though his livid face and his bandages gave the lie to his words.  He
+could not move without pain; and for Badelon, his knee was as big as two
+with plaisters of his own placing.
+
+Count Hannibal stared at the ceiling.  "You could not strike two blows!"
+he said.  "Don't lie to me!  And Badelon cannot walk two yards!  Fine
+fighters!" he continued with bitterness, not all bitter.  "Fine bars
+'twixt a man and death!  No, it is time to turn the face to the wall.
+And, since go I must, it shall not be said Count Hannibal dared not go
+alone!  Besides--"
+
+Bigot stopped him with an oath that was in part a cry of pain.
+
+"D---n her!" he exclaimed in fury, "'tis she is that _besides_!  I know
+it.  'Tis she has been our ruin from the day we saw her first, ay, to
+this day!  'Tis she has bewitched you until your blood, my lord, has
+turned to water.  Or you would never, to save the hand that betrayed us,
+never to save a man--"
+
+"Silence!" Count Hannibal cried, in a terrible voice.  And rising on his
+elbow, he poised the dagger as if he would hurl it.  "Silence, or I will
+spit you like the vermin you are!  Silence, and listen!  And you, old ban-
+dog, listen too, for I know you obstinate!  It is not to save him.  It is
+because I will die as I have lived, fearing nothing and asking nothing!
+It were easy to bar the door as you would have me, and die in the corner
+here like a wolf at bay, biting to the last.  That were easy, old wolf-
+hound!  Pleasant and good sport!"
+
+"Ay!  That were a death!" the veteran cried, his eyes brightening.  "So I
+would fain die!"
+
+"And I!" Count Hannibal returned, showing his teeth in a grim smile.  "I
+too!  Yet I will not!  I will not!  Because so to die were to die
+unwillingly, and give them triumph.  Be dragged to death?  No, old dog,
+if die we must, we will go to death!  We will die grandly, highly, as
+becomes Tavannes!  That when we are gone they may say, 'There died a
+man!'"
+
+"_She_ may say!" Bigot muttered, scowling.
+
+Count Hannibal heard and glared at him, but presently thought better of
+it, and after a pause--
+
+"Ay, she too!" he said.  "Why not?  As we have played the game--for
+her--so, though we lose, we will play it to the end; nor because we lose
+throw down the cards!  Besides, man, die in the corner, die biting, and
+he dies too!"
+
+"And why not?" Bigot asked, rising in a fury.  "Why not?  Whose work is
+it we lie here, snared by these clowns of fisherfolk?  Who led us wrong
+and betrayed us?  He die?  Would the devil had taken him a year ago!
+Would he were within my reach now!  I would kill him with my bare
+fingers!  He die?  And why not?"
+
+"Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!" Count Hannibal
+answered coolly.  "If it would, he would die!  But it will not; and we
+must even do again as we have done.  I have spared him--he's a
+white-livered hound!--both once and twice, and we must go to the end with
+it since no better can be!  I have thought it out, and it must be.  Only
+see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can
+reach it.  And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her
+silk glove again--to put in her bosom!"--with a grimace and a sudden
+reddening of his harsh features--"if master priest come within reach of
+my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go."
+
+"Ay, ay!" said Badelon.  "And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail
+of mine!  I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes!  I shall be
+there!"
+
+"You?"
+
+"Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly.  "I may halt on this leg for
+aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who
+was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage under the
+Chatelet."
+
+"Bah, man, you will get a new lord!"
+
+Badelon nodded.  "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and
+thoughtfully.  "And I am tired.  They are of another sort, lords now,
+than they were when I was young.  It was a word and a blow then.  Now I
+am old, with most it is--'Old hog, your distance!  You scent my lady!'
+Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and summer
+or winter heard the lark sing.  Now they are curled, and paint
+themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies--who shamed to be seen at
+Court or board when I was a boy--and love better to hear the mouse squeak
+than the lark sing."
+
+"Still, if I give you my gold chain," Count Hannibal answered quietly,
+"'twill keep you from that."
+
+"Give it to Bigot," the old man answered.  The splint he was fashioning
+had fallen on his knees, and his eyes were fixed on the distance of his
+youth.  "For me, my lord, I am tired, and I go with you.  I go with you.
+It is a good death to die biting before the strength be quite gone.  Have
+the dagger too, if you please, and I'll fit it within the splint right
+neatly.  But I shall be there--"
+
+"And you'll strike home?" Tavannes cried eagerly.  He raised himself on
+his elbow, a gleam of joy in his gloomy eyes.
+
+"Have no fear, my lord.  See, does it tremble?"  He held out his hand.
+"And when you are sped, I will try the Spanish stroke--upwards with a
+turn ere you withdraw, that I learned from Ruiz--on the shaven pate.  I
+see them about me now!" the old man continued, his face flushing, his
+form dilating.  "It will be odd if I cannot snatch a sword and hew down
+three to go with Tavannes!  And Bigot, he will see my lord the Marshal by-
+and-by; and as I do to the priest, the Marshal will do to Montsoreau.  Ho!
+ho!  He will teach him the _coup de Jarnac_, never fear!"  And the old
+man's moustaches curled up ferociously.
+
+Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled with joy.  "Old dog!" he cried--and he
+held his hand to the veteran, who brushed it reverently with his lips--"we
+will go together then!  Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!"
+
+"Touches Tavannes!" Badelon cried, the glow of battle lighting his
+bloodshot eyes.  He rose to his feet.  "Touches Tavannes!  You mind at
+Jarnac--"
+
+"Ah!  At Jarnac!"
+
+"When we charged their horse, was my boot a foot from yours, my lord?"
+
+"Not a foot!"
+
+"And at Dreux," the old man continued with a proud, elated gesture, "when
+we rode down the German pikemen--they were grass before us, leaves on the
+wind, thistledown--was it not I who covered your bridle hand, and swerved
+not in the _melee_?"
+
+"It was!  It was!"
+
+"And at St. Quentin, when we fled before the Spaniard--it was his day,
+you remember, and cost us dear--"
+
+"Ay, I was young then," Tavannes cried in turn, his eyes glistening.  "St.
+Quentin!  It was the tenth of August.  And you were new with me, and
+seized my rein--"
+
+"And we rode off together, my lord--of the last, of the last, as God sees
+me!  And striking as we went, so that they left us for easier game."
+
+"It was so, good sword!  I remember it as if it had been yesterday!"
+
+"And at Cerisoles, the Battle of the Plain, in the old Spanish wars, that
+was most like a joust of all the pitched fields I ever saw--at Cerisoles,
+where I caught your horse?  You mind me?  It was in the shock when we
+broke Guasto's line--"
+
+"At Cerisoles?" Count Hannibal muttered slowly.  "Why, man, I--"
+
+"I caught your horse, and mounted you afresh?  You remember, my lord?  And
+at Landriano, where Leyva turned the tables on us again."
+
+Count Hannibal stared.  "Landriano?" he muttered bluntly.  "'Twas in '29,
+forty years ago and more!  My father, indeed--"
+
+"And at Rome--at Rome, my lord?  _Mon Dieu_! in the old days at Rome!
+When the Spanish company scaled the wall--Ruiz was first, I next--was it
+not my foot you held?  And was it not I who dragged you up, while the
+devils of Swiss pressed us hard?  Ah, those were days, my lord!  I was
+young then, and you, my lord, young too, and handsome as the morning--"
+
+"You rave!" Tavannes cried, finding his tongue at last.  "Rome?  You
+rave, old man!  Why, I was not born in those days.  My father even was a
+boy!  It was in '27 you sacked it--five-and-forty years ago!"
+
+The old man passed his hands over his heated face, and, as a man roused
+suddenly from sleep looks, he looked round the room.  The light died out
+of his eyes--as a light blown out in a room; his form seemed to shrink,
+even while the others gazed at him, and he sat down.
+
+"No, I remember," he muttered slowly.  "It was Prince Philibert of
+Chalons, my lord of Orange."
+
+"Dead these forty years!"
+
+"Ay, dead these forty years!  All dead!" the old man whispered, gazing at
+his gnarled hand, and opening and shutting it by turns.  "And I grow
+childish!  'Tis time, high time, I followed them!  It trembles now; but
+have no fear, my lord, this hand will not tremble then.  All dead!  Ay,
+all dead!"
+
+He sank into a mournful silence; and Tavannes, after gazing at him awhile
+in rough pity, fell to his own meditations, which were gloomy enough.  The
+day was beginning to wane, and with the downward turn, though the sun
+still shone brightly through the southern windows, a shadow seemed to
+fall across his thoughts.  They no longer rioted in a turmoil of defiance
+as in the forenoon.  In its turn, sober reflection marshalled the past
+before his eyes.  The hopes of a life, the ambitions of a life, moved in
+sombre procession, and things done and things left undone, the
+sovereignty which Nostradamus had promised, the faces of men he had
+spared and of men he had not spared--and the face of one woman.
+
+She would not now be his.  He had played highly, and he would lose
+highly, playing the game to the end, that to-morrow she might think of
+him highly.  Had she begun to think of him at all?  In the chamber of the
+inn at Angers he had fancied a change in her, an awakening to life and
+warmth, a shadow of turning to him.  It had pleased him to think so, at
+any rate.  It pleased him still to imagine--of this he was more
+confident--that in the time to come, when she was Tignonville's, she
+would think of him secretly and kindly.  She would remember him, and in
+her thoughts and in her memory he would grow to the heroic, even as the
+man she had chosen would shrink as she learned to know him.
+
+It pleased him, that.  It was almost all that was left to please
+him--that, and to die proudly as he had lived.  But as the day wore on,
+and the room grew hot and close, and the pain in his thigh became more
+grievous, the frame of his mind altered.  A sombre rage was born and grew
+in him, and a passion fierce and ill-suppressed.  To end thus, with
+nothing done, nothing accomplished of all his hopes and ambitions!  To
+die thus, crushed in a corner by a mean priest and a rabble of spearmen,
+he who had seen Dreux and Jarnac, had defied the King, and dared to turn
+the St. Bartholomew to his ends!  To die thus, and leave her to that
+puppet!  Strong man as he was, of a strength of will surpassed by few, it
+taxed him to the utmost to lie and make no sign.  Once, indeed, he raised
+himself on his elbow with something between an oath and a snarl, and he
+seemed about to speak.  So that Bigot came hurriedly to him.
+
+"My lord?"
+
+"Water!" he said.  "Water, fool!"  And, having drunk, he turned his face
+to the wall, lest he should name her or ask for her.
+
+For the desire to see her before he died, to look into her eyes, to touch
+her hand once, only once, assailed his mind and all but whelmed his will.
+She had been with him, he knew it, in the night; she had left him only at
+daybreak.  But then, in his state of collapse, he had been hardly
+conscious of her presence.  Now to ask for her or to see her would stamp
+him coward, say what he might to her.  The proverb, that the King's face
+gives grace, applied to her; and an overture on his side could mean but
+one thing, that he sought her grace.  And that he would not do though the
+cold waters of death covered him more and more, and the coming of the
+end--in that quiet chamber, while the September sun sank to the appointed
+place--awoke wild longings and a wild rebellion in his breast.  His
+thoughts were very bitter, as he lay, his loneliness of the uttermost.  He
+turned his face to the wall.
+
+In that posture he slept after a time, watched over by Bigot with looks
+of rage and pity.  And on the room fell a long silence.  The sun had
+lacked three hours of setting when he fell asleep.  When he re-opened his
+eyes, and, after lying for a few minutes between sleep and waking, became
+conscious of his position, of the day, of the things which had happened,
+and his helplessness--an awakening which wrung from him an involuntary
+groan--the light in the room was still strong, and even bright.  He
+fancied for a moment that he had merely dozed off and awaked again; and
+he continued to lie with his face to the wall, courting a return of
+slumber.
+
+But sleep did not come, and little by little, as he lay listening and
+thinking and growing more restless, he got the fancy that he was alone.
+The light fell brightly on the wall to which his face was turned; how
+could that be if Bigot's broad shoulders still blocked the loophole?
+Presently, to assure himself, he called the man by name.
+
+He got no answer.
+
+"Badelon!" he muttered.  "Badelon!"
+
+Had he gone, too, the old and faithful?  It seemed so, for again no
+answer came.
+
+He had been accustomed all his life to instant service; to see the act
+follow the word ere the word ceased to sound.  And nothing which had gone
+before, nothing which he had suffered since his defeat at Angers, had
+brought him to feel his impotence and his position--and that the end of
+his power was indeed come--as sharply as this.  The blood rushed to his
+head; almost the tears to eyes which had not shed them since boyhood, and
+would not shed them now, weak as he was!  He rose on his elbow and looked
+with a full heart; it was as he had fancied.  Badelon's stool was empty;
+the embrasure--that was empty too.  Through its narrow outlet he had a
+tiny view of the shore and the low rocky hill, of which the summit shone
+warm in the last rays of the setting sun.
+
+The setting sun!  Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold;
+the shore at its foot was grey.  Then he had slept long, and the time was
+come.  He drew a deep breath and listened.  But on all within and without
+lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a
+wave on the causeway.  The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light
+breeze was rising.
+
+He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen.  An hour before sunset
+was the time they had named for the exchange.  What did it mean?  In five
+minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on
+the hillside was moving and retreating upwards.  And Bigot and old
+Badelon?  Why had they left him while he slept?  An hour before sunset!
+Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and--what
+was that?
+
+He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a
+groan from him.  At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman
+lay prone on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms.  She
+lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole,
+her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck.  A woman!  Count Hannibal
+stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again.  It
+was no phantasm.  It was the Countess; it was his wife!
+
+He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose
+slowly to his cheek.  And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to foot,
+from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the shod
+feet; unchecked he took his fill of that which he had so much desired--the
+seeing her!  A woman prone, with all of her hidden but her hands: a
+hundred acquainted with her would not have known her.  But he knew her,
+and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a thousand, by her
+hands alone.
+
+What was she doing here, and in this guise?  He pondered; then he looked
+from her for an instant, and saw that while he had gazed at her the sun
+had set, the light had passed from the top of the hill; the world without
+and the room within were growing cold.  Was that the cause she no longer
+lay quiet?  He saw a shudder run through her, and a second; then it
+seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned, and prayed in half-
+heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her forehead on her arms,
+and then was still again, as still as death.  By the time the paroxysm
+had passed, the last flush of sunset had faded from the sky, and the
+hills were growing dark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.  HIS KINGDOM.
+
+
+Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once.
+Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his
+eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor.  A moment later she
+met his gaze, and he looked to see her start.  Instead, she stood quiet
+and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad solemnity, as if she saw
+not him only, but the dead; while first one tremor and then a second
+shook her frame.
+
+At length "It is over!" she whispered.  "Patience, Monsieur; have no
+fear, I will be brave.  But I must give a little to him."
+
+"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily, pale.
+
+She smiled with an odd passionateness.  "Who was my lover!" she cried,
+her voice a-thrill.  "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied
+him, though I have left him to die!  It was just.  He who has so tried me
+knows it was just!  He whom I have sacrificed--he knows it too, now!  But
+it is hard to be--just," with a quavering smile.  "You who take all may
+give him a little, may pardon me a little, may have--patience!"
+
+Count Hannibal uttered a strangled cry, between a moan and a roar.  A
+moment he beat the coverlid with his hands in impotence.  Then he sank
+back on the bed.
+
+"Water!" he muttered.  "Water!"
+
+She fetched it hurriedly, and, raising his head on her arm, held it to
+his lips.  He drank, and lay back again with closed eyes.  He lay so
+still and so long that she thought that he had fainted; but after a pause
+he spoke.
+
+"You have done that?" he whispered; "you have done that?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, shuddering.  "God forgive me!  I have done that!  I
+had to do that, or--"
+
+"And is it too late--to undo it?"
+
+"It is too late."  A sob choked her voice.
+
+Tears--tears incredible, unnatural--welled from under Count Hannibal's
+closed eyelids, and rolled sluggishly down his harsh cheek to the edge of
+his beard.
+
+"I would have gone," he muttered.  "If you had spoken, I would have
+spared you this."
+
+"I know," she answered unsteadily; "the men told me."
+
+"And yet--"
+
+"It was just.  And you are my husband," she replied.  "More, I am the
+captive of your sword, and as you spared me in your strength, my lord, I
+spared you in your weakness."
+
+"Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu, Madame!" he cried, "at what a cost!"
+
+And that arrested, that touched her in the depths of her grief and her
+horror; even while the gibbet on the causeway, which had burned itself
+into her eyeballs, hung before her.  For she knew that it was the cost to
+_her_ he was counting.  She knew that for himself he had ever held life
+cheap, that he could have seen Tignonville suffer without a qualm.  And
+the thoughtfulness for her, the value he placed on a thing--even on a
+rival's life--because its was dear to her, touched her home, moved her as
+few things could have moved her at that moment.  She saw it of a piece
+with all that had gone before, with all that had passed between them,
+since that fatal Sunday in Paris.  But she made no sign.  More than she
+had said she would not say; words of love, even of reconciliation, had no
+place on her lips while he whom she had sacrificed awaited his burial.
+
+And meantime the man beside her lay and found it incredible.  "It was
+just," she had said.  And he knew it; Tignonville's folly--that and that
+only had led them into the snare and caused his own capture.  But what
+had justice to do with the things of this world?  In his experience, the
+strong hand--that was justice, in France; and possession--that was law.
+By the strong hand he had taken her, and by the strong hand she might
+have freed herself.
+
+And she had not.  There was the incredible thing.  She had chosen instead
+to do justice!  It passed belief.  Opening his eyes on a silence which
+had lasted some minutes, a silence rendered more solemn by the lapping
+water without, Tavannes saw her kneeling in the dusk of the chamber, her
+head bowed over his couch, her face hidden in her hands.  He knew that
+she prayed, and feebly he deemed the whole a dream.  No scene akin to it
+had had place in his life; and, weakened and in pain, he prayed that the
+vision might last for ever, that he might never awake.
+
+But by-and-by, wrestling with the dread thought of what she had done, and
+the horror which would return upon her by fits and spasms, she flung out
+a hand, and it fell on him.  He started, and the movement, jarring the
+broken limb, wrung from him a cry of pain.  She looked up and was going
+to speak, when a scuffling of feet under the gateway arch, and a confused
+sound of several voices raised at once, arrested the words on her lips.
+She rose to her feet and listened.  Dimly he could see her face through
+the dusk.  Her eyes were on the door, and she breathed quickly.
+
+A moment or two passed in this way, and then from the hurly-burly in the
+gateway the footsteps of two men--one limped--detached themselves and
+came nearer and nearer.  They stopped without.  A gleam of light shone
+under the door, and some one knocked.
+
+She went to the door, and, withdrawing the bar, stepped quickly back to
+the bedside, where for an instant the light borne by those who entered
+blinded her.  Then, above the lanthorn, the faces of La Tribe and Bigot
+broke upon her, and their shining eyes told her that they bore good news.
+It was well, for the men seemed tongue-tied.  The minister's fluency was
+gone; he was very pale, and it was Bigot who in the end spoke for both.
+He stepped forward, and, kneeling, kissed her cold hand.
+
+"My lady," he said, "you have gained all, and lost nothing.  Blessed be
+God!"
+
+"Blessed be God!" the minister wept.  And from the passage without came
+the sound of laughter and weeping and many voices, with a flutter of
+lights and flying skirts, and women's feet.
+
+She stared at him wildly, doubtfully, her hand at her throat.
+
+"What?" she said, "he is not dead--M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"No, he is alive," La Tribe answered, "he is alive."  And he lifted up
+his hands as if he gave thanks.
+
+"Alive?" she cried.  "Alive!  Oh, Heaven is merciful.  You are sure?  You
+are sure?"
+
+"Sure, Madame, sure.  He was not in their hands.  He was dismounted in
+the first shock, it seems, and, coming to himself after a time, crept
+away and reached St. Gilles, and came hither in a boat.  But the enemy
+learned that he had not entered with us, and of this the priest wove his
+snare.  Blessed be God, who put it into your heart to escape it!"
+
+The Countess stood motionless, and with closed eyes pressed her hands to
+her temples.  Once she swayed as if she would fall her length, and Bigot
+sprang forward to support and save her.  But she opened her eyes at that,
+sighed very deeply, and seemed to recover herself.
+
+"You are sure?" she said faintly.  "It is no trick?"
+
+"No, Madame, it is no trick," La Tribe answered.  "M. de Tignonville is
+alive, and here."
+
+"Here!"  She started at the word.  The colour fluttered in her cheek.
+"But the keys," she murmured.  And she passed her hand across her brow.
+"I thought--that I had them."
+
+"He has not entered," the minister answered, "for that reason.  He is
+waiting at the postern, where he landed.  He came, hoping to be of use to
+you."
+
+She paused a moment, and when she spoke again her aspect had undergone a
+subtle change.  Her head was high, a flush had risen to her cheeks, her
+eyes were bright.
+
+"Then," she said, addressing La Tribe, "do you, Monsieur, go to him, and
+pray him in my name to retire to St. Gilles, if he can do so without
+peril.  He has no place here--now; and if he can go safely to his home it
+will be well that he do so.  Add, if you please, that Madame de Tavannes
+thanks him for his offer of aid, but in her husband's house she needs no
+other protection."
+
+Bigot's eyes sparkled with joy.
+
+The minister hesitated.  "No more, Madame?" he faltered.  He was tender-
+hearted, and Tignonville was of his people.
+
+"No more," she said gravely, bowing her head.  "It is not M. de
+Tignonville I have to thank, but Heaven's mercy, that I do not stand here
+at this moment unhappy as I entered--a woman accursed, to be pointed at
+while I live.  And the dead"--she pointed solemnly through the dark
+casement to the shore--"the dead lie there."
+
+La Tribe went.
+
+She stood a moment in thought, and then took the keys from the rough
+stone window-ledge on which she had laid them when she entered.  As the
+cold iron touched her fingers she shuddered.  The contact awoke again the
+horror and misery in which she had groped, a lost thing, when she last
+felt that chill.
+
+"Take them," she said; and she gave them to Bigot.  "Until my lord can
+leave his couch they will remain in your charge, and you will answer for
+all to him.  Go, now, take the light; and in half an hour send Madame
+Carlat to me."
+
+A wave broke heavily on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea;
+and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders.  But
+the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where the
+Countess knelt in silence beside the bed--knelt, her head bowed on her
+clasped hands, as she had knelt before, but with a mind how different,
+with what different thoughts!  Count Hannibal could see her head but
+dimly, for the light shed upwards by the spume of the sea fell only on
+the rafters.  But he knew she was there, and he would fain, for his heart
+was full, have laid his hand on her hair.
+
+And yet he would not.  He would not, out of pride.  Instead he bit on his
+harsh beard, and lay looking upward to the rafters, waiting what would
+come.  He who had held her at his will now lay at hers, and waited.  He
+who had spared her life at a price now took his own a gift at her hands,
+and bore it.
+
+"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes_--"
+
+His mind went back by some chance to those words--the words he had
+neither meant nor fulfilled.  It passed from them to the marriage and the
+blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last ride
+between La Fleche and Angers--the ride during which he had played with
+her fears and hugged himself on the figure he would make on the morrow.
+The figure?  Alas! of all his plans for dazzling her had come--_this_!
+Angers had defeated him, a priest had worsted him.  In place of releasing
+Tignonville after the fashion of Bayard and the Paladins, and in the
+teeth of snarling thousands, he had come near to releasing him after
+another fashion and at his own expense.  Instead of dazzling her by his
+mastery and winning her by his magnanimity, he lay here, owing her his
+life, and so weak, so broken, that the tears of childhood welled up in
+his eyes.
+
+Out of the darkness a hand, cool and firm, slid into his, clasped it
+tightly, drew it to warm lips, carried it to a woman's bosom.
+
+"My lord," she murmured, "I was the captive of your sword, and you spared
+me.  Him I loved you took and spared him too--not once or twice.  Angers,
+also, and my people you would have saved for my sake.  And you thought I
+could do this!  Oh! shame, shame!"  But her hand held his always.
+
+"You loved him," he muttered.
+
+"Yes, I loved him," she answered slowly and thoughtfully.  "I loved him."
+And she fell silent a minute.  Then, "And I feared you," she added, her
+voice low.  "Oh, how I feared you--and hated you!"
+
+"And now?"
+
+"I do not fear him," she answered, smiling in the darkness.  "Nor hate
+him.  And for you, my lord, I am your wife and must do your bidding,
+whether I will or no.  I have no choice."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Is that not so?" she asked.
+
+He tried weakly to withdraw his hand.
+
+But she clung to it.  "I must bear your blows or your kisses.  I must be
+as you will and do as you will, and go happy or sad, lonely or with you,
+as you will!  As you will, my lord!  For I am your chattel, your
+property, your own.  Have you not told me so?"
+
+"But your heart," he cried fiercely, "is his!  Your heart, which you told
+me in the meadow could never be mine!"
+
+"I lied," she murmured, laughing tearfully, and her hands hovered over
+him.  "It has come back!  And it is on my lips."
+
+And she leant over and kissed him.  And Count Hannibal knew that he had
+entered into his kingdom, the sovereignty of a woman's heart.
+
+* * * * *
+
+An hour later there was a stir in the village on the mainland.  Lanthorns
+began to flit to and fro.  Sulkily men were saddling and preparing for
+the road.  It was far to Challans, farther to Lege--more than one day,
+and many a weary league to Ponts de Ce and the Loire.  The men who had
+ridden gaily southwards on the scent of spoil and revenge turned their
+backs on the castle with many a sullen oath and word.  They burned a
+hovel or two, and stripped such as they spared, after the fashion of the
+day; and it had gone ill with the peasant woman who fell into their
+hands.  Fortunately, under cover of the previous night every soul had
+escaped from the village, some to sea, and the rest to take shelter among
+the sand-dunes; and as the troopers rode up the path from the beach, and
+through the green valley, where their horses shied from the bodies of the
+men they had slain, there was not an eye to see them go.
+
+Or to mark the man who rode last, the man of the white face--scarred on
+the temple--and the burning eyes, who paused on the brow of the hill,
+and, before he passed beyond, cursed with quivering lips the foe who had
+escaped him.  The words were lost, as soon as spoken, in the murmur of
+the sea on the causeway; the sea, fit emblem of the Eternal, which rolled
+its tide regardless of blessing or cursing, good or ill will, nor spared
+one jot of ebb or flow because a puny creature had spoken to the night.
+
+
+
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