Count Hannibal

"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!