Count Hannibal

"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?"