Count Hannibal

"Well, my lord, as you will," he said sullenly. "All the same I would

advise you to close the door and bolt and bar. We shall not be the last

to call to-day." And he turned his horse in ill-humour, and forced it,

snorting and plunging, through the crowd.

"Bolt and bar?" Tavannes cried after him in fury. "See you my answer to

that!" And turning on the threshold, "Within there!" he cried. "Open

the shutters and set lights, and the table! Light, I say; light! And

lay on quickly, if you value your lives! And throw open, for I sup with

your mistress to-night, if it rain blood without! Do you hear me,

rogues? Set on!"

He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again to

the street. He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in

Tignonville's face, he laughed aloud.

"Does Monsieur sup with us?" he said. "To complete the party? Or will

he choose to sup with our friends yonder? It is for him to say. I

confess, for my part," with an awful smile, "their hospitality seems a

trifle crude, and boisterous."

Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered. The same horde which had so

lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the street,

and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of

tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose

the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the sounds that

Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron

heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.

For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.

"You'll join us, I think?" he said, with an undisguised sneer. "Then,

after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table

is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you

please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this

house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we have changed

places."

Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in

his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion

along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had

seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A

dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment. What the

house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the

table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which

extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the

height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been

removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers. To such eyes of

passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming

weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout

Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange

indeed!