Count Hannibal

"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.