"And toe of my feet!" the cripple answered, not to be outdone. "And toe
of my feet! A full score!"
"'Tis according to your sins!" the other, who had something of the air of
a Churchman, answered. "The more heretics killed, the more sins
forgiven. Remember that, brother, and spare not if your soul be
burdened! They blaspheme God and call Him paste! In the paste of their
own blood," he continued ferociously, "I will knead them and roll them
out, saith the good Father Pezelay, my master!"
The cripple crossed himself. "Whom God keep," he said. "He is a good
man. But you are looking ill, noble sir?" he continued, peering
curiously at the young Huguenot.
"'Tis the heat," Tignonville muttered. "The night is stifling, and the
lights make it worse. I will go nearer the door."
He hoped to escape them; he had some hope even of escaping from the room
and giving the alarm. But when he had forced his way to the threshold,
he found it guarded by two pikemen; and glancing back to see if his
movements were observed--for he knew that his agitation might have
awakened suspicion--he found that the taller of the two whom he had left,
the black-garbed man with the hungry face, was watching him a-tiptoe,
over the shoulders of the crowd.
With that, and the sense of his impotence, the lights began to swim
before his eyes. The catastrophe that overhung his party, the fate so
treacherously prepared for all whom he loved and all with whom his
fortunes were bound up, confused his brain almost to delirium. He strove
to think, to calculate chances, to imagine some way in which he might
escape from the room, or from a window might cry the alarm. But he could
not bring his mind to a point. Instead, in lightning flashes he foresaw
what must happen: his betrothed in the hands of the murderers; the fair
face that had smiled on him frozen with terror; brave men, the fighters
of Montauban, the defenders of Angely, strewn dead through the dark lanes
of the city. And now a gust of passion, and now a shudder of fear,
seized him; and in any other assembly his agitation must have led to
detection. But in that room were many twitching faces and trembling
hands. Murder, cruel, midnight, and most foul, wrung even from the
murderers her toll of horror. While some, to hide the nervousness they
felt, babbled of what they would do, others betrayed by the intentness
with which they awaited the signal, the dreadful anticipations that
possessed their souls.
Before he had formed any plan, a movement took place near the door. The
stairs shook beneath the sudden trampling of feet, a voice cried "De par
le Roi! De par le Roi!" and the babel of the room died down. The throng
swayed and fell back on either hand, and Marshal Tavannes entered,
wearing half armour, with a white sash; he was followed by six or eight
gentlemen in like guise. Amid cries of "Jarnac! Jarnac!"--for to him
the credit of that famous fight, nominally won by the King's brother, was
popularly given--he advanced up the room, met the Provost of the
merchants, and began to confer with him. Apparently he asked the latter
to select some men who could be trusted on a special mission, for the
Provost looked round and beckoned to his side one or two of higher rank
than the herd, and then one or two of the most truculent aspect.