"Whose teeth are not yet grown! He was wise."
"To be sure, M. de Tavannes, to be sure. But the King was annoyed, and
on top of that came a priest with complaints, and if I may make so bold
as to advise you, you will not--"
But Tavannes fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty, and
with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the warning which the other had
it in his mind to give. A moment and he reached the inner circle, and
there halted, disconcerted, nay taken aback. For as soon as he showed
his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro like a caged beast, before
a table at which three clerks knelt on cushions, espied him, and stood
still. With a glare of something like madness in his eyes, Charles
raised his hand, and with a shaking finger singled him out.
"So, by G-d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy. And
he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him. "You are
there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I tell you,
it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is said
everywhere Guise does all and serves God, and we follow because we must!
It's you, and such as you, are stumbling-blocks to our good folk of
Paris! Are you traitor, sirrah?" he continued with passion, "or are you
of our brother Alencon's opinions, that you traverse our orders to the
damnation of your soul and our discredit? Are you traitor? Or are you
heretic? Or what are you? God in heaven, will you answer me, man, or
shall I send you where you will find your tongue?"
"I know not of what your Majesty accuses me," Count Hannibal answered,
with a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders.
"I? 'Tis not I," the King retorted. His hair hung damp on his brow, and
he dried his hands continually; while his gestures had the ill-measured
and eccentric violence of an epileptic. "Here, you! Speak, father, and
confound him!"
Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest
whom his brother had ridden down that morning. Father Pezelay's pale
hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one
temple and part of his face. But below the bandage the flame of his eyes
was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue. To the King he had
come--for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's
presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance was
come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to grow
longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like. He stood there a fitting
representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles and his
successor--the last of a doomed line--alternately used as tool or feared
as master; and to which the most debased and the most immoral of courts
paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage. Even in the midst
of the drunken, shameless courtiers--who stood, if they stood for
anything, for that other influence of the day, the Renaissance--he was to
be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it. He knew that in the eyes
not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten who listened to him, a priest
was more sacred than a virgin, and a tonsure than all the virtues of
spotless innocence.