Count Hannibal

"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.

"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with passion. "His Majesty

knows whether I serve him."

"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve

me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood

of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in

mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow! Ay, you will!

you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with

a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as you! Foucauld was

better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my God!"

And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so

often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst

into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with

the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer

of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the

cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the

shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for

their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes,

trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.

One looked at another in consternation. Fear grew in eyes that a moment

before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic. If

he changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed

on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe? Whose turn might it not

be to-morrow? Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done

this day? Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before,

shuddered and glanced behind them. It was as if the dead who lay stark

without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose

shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall;

and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold

breath in the living ears, "A reckoning! A reckoning! As I am, thou

shalt be!"

It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with his

hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward.

"Nay, sire," he cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and

seemed to challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed,

yet will not I! What we have done we have done! So be it! The dead are

dead! So be it! For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who

will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition! I have

said I will go, and I go, sire. And you, churchman," he continued,

turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to church! To

church, shaveling! Go, watch and pray for us! Fast and flog for us!

Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down! For it is all,

it seems, you will do for your King!"