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Count Hannibal

Page 132

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."

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