Count Hannibal

"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.