Count Hannibal

Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and

arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,

from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests

rose without ceasing. The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped

the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and

heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they

seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed

gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,

brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the

terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and

some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and

bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most

striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for

fresh excitement. In the space of time it took him to pass through them,

Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city;

that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had

escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the

pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the

fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then

entering by the Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the

Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead,

that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre,

that-And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot

of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the

new facade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling

contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower

removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But what was this which lay

along the foot of the new Italian wall? This, round which some stood,

gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long

downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a

window?

Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of

buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much

spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical

laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the

court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she

turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung back,

giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting

Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and

a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was out again.