Count Hannibal

It was Tignonville's salvation that the men who crowded the long white-

walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring lights,

were of all classes. There were butchers, natives of the surrounding

quarter whom the scent of blood had drawn from their lairs; and there

were priests with hatchet faces, who whispered in the butchers' ears.

There were gentlemen of the robe, and plain mechanics, rich merchants in

their gowns, and bare-armed ragpickers, sleek choristers, and shabby led-

captains; but differ as they might in other points, in one thing all were

alike. From all, gentle or simple, rose the same cry for blood, the same

aspiration to be first equipped for the fray. In one corner a man of

rank stood silent and apart, his hand on his sword, the working of his

face alone betraying the storm that reigned within. In another, a Norman

horse-dealer talked in low whispers with two thieves. In a third, a gold-

wire drawer addressed an admiring group from the Sorbonne; and meantime

the middle of the floor grew into a seething mass of muttering, scowling

men, through whom the last comers, thrust as they might, had much ado to

force their way.

And from all under the low ceiling rose a ceaseless hum, though none

spoke loud. "Kill! kill! kill!" was the burden; the accompaniment such

profanities and blasphemies as had long disgraced the Paris pulpits, and

day by day had fanned the bigotry--already at a white heat--of the

Parisian populace. Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would

fain have closed his ears. But for his life he dared not. And presently

a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted

hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone.

"Are you sharp, noble sir?" he asked, with a leer. "Are you sharp? It's

surprising how the edge goes on the bone. A cut and thrust? Well, every

man to his taste. But give me a broad butcher's knife and I'll ask no

help, be it man, woman, or child!"

A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened.

"But the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?" he said. And he

looked to Tignonville to join in the jest.

"Ay, give me a white throat for choice!" the cripple answered, with

horrible zest. "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night! Lord,

I think I hear them squeal! You don't need it, sir?" he continued, again

proffering the whetstone. "No? Then I'll give my blade another whet, in

the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good Father Pezelay!"

"Ay, and give me a turn!" the lean man cried, proffering his weapon. "May

I die if I do not kill one of the accursed for every finger of my hands!"