Count Hannibal

"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.

"Absurd! The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,

"you are like so many of our people! You think a Catholic capable of the

worst."

"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.

"That's over now, if people would only understand. This wedding has put

an end to all that. But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly; and

he stopped. "Instead, let me take you home."

"If you please. Carlat and the servants should be below."

He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with

his other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase,

that by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace. Here a mob of

armed servants, of lacqueys, and footboys, some bearing torches, and some

carrying their masters' cloaks and galoshes, loitered to and fro. Had

M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less occupied

with his own importance, he might have noted more than one face which

looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one overt sneer at

his expense. But in the business of summoning Carlat--Mademoiselle de

Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the contemptuous

"Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the "Southern

dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of the

King's brother. He was engaged in finding the steward, and in aiding him

to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a new acquirement, which

he had picked up since he came to Paris, he made a way for her through

the crowd. A moment, and the three, followed by half a dozen armed

servants, bearing pikes and torches, detached themselves from the throng,

and crossing the courtyard, with its rows of lighted windows, passed out

by the gate between the Tennis Courts, and so into the Rue des Fosses de

St. Germain.

Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still

contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of

St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after nine: the heat

of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint

distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make itself heard above

the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a subdued hum. As

Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the Cloister of St. Germain,

where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots,

had been wounded, she pressed her escort's hand, and involuntarily drew

nearer to him. But he laughed at her.