Count Hannibal

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.