Count Hannibal

"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.