The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on the instant, the Marshal's brother had said his last word in the world.
Yet as he stood there, a head above the crowd, he seemed unconscious alike of Tignonville and the point that all but pricked his breast. Swart and grim-visaged, his harsh features distorted by the glare which shone upon him, he looked beyond the Huguenot to the sea of tossing arms and raging faces that surged about the saddles of the horsemen. It was to these he spoke.
"Begone, dogs!" he cried, in a voice that startled the nearest, "or I will whip you away with my stirrup-leathers! Do you hear? Begone! This house is not for you! Burn, kill, plunder where you will, but go hence!"
"But 'tis on the list!" one of the wretches yelled. "'Tis on the list!" And he pushed forward until he stood at Tignonville's elbow.
"And has no cross!" shrieked another, thrusting himself forward in his turn. "See you, let us by, whoever you are! In the King's name, kill! It has no cross!"
"Then," Tavannes thundered, "will I nail you for a cross to the front of it! No cross, say you? I will make one of you, foul crow!"
And as he spoke, his arm shot out; the man recoiled, his fellow likewise. But one of the mounted archers took up the matter.
"Nay, but, my lord," he said--he knew Tavannes--"it is the King's will there be no favour shown to-night to any, small or great. And this house is registered, and is full of heretics."
"And has no cross!" the rabble urged in chorus. And they leapt up and down in their impatience, and to see the better. "And has no cross!" they persisted. They could understand that. Of what use crosses, if they were not to kill where there was no cross? Daylight was not plainer.
Tavannes' face grew dark, and he shook his finger at the archer who had spoken. "Rogue," he cried, "does the King's will run here only? Are there no other houses to sack or men to kill, that you must beard me? And favour? You will have little of mine, if you do not budge and take your vile tail with you! Off! Or must I cry 'Tavannes!' and bid my people sweep you from the streets?"
The foremost rank hesitated, awed by his manner and his name; while the rearmost, attracted by the prospect of easier pillage, had gone off already. The rest wavered; and another and another broke away. The archer who had put himself forward saw which way the wind was blowing, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Well, my lord, as you will," he said sullenly. "All the same I would advise you to close the door and bolt and bar. We shall not be the last to call to-day." And he turned his horse in ill-humour, and forced it, snorting and plunging, through the crowd.
"Bolt and bar?" Tavannes cried after him in fury. "See you my answer to that!" And turning on the threshold, "Within there!" he cried. "Open the shutters and set lights, and the table! Light, I say; light! And lay on quickly, if you value your lives! And throw open, for I sup with your mistress tonight, if it rain blood without! Do you hear me, rogues? Set on!"
He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again to the street. He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in Tignonville's face, he laughed aloud. "Does Monsieur sup with us?" he said. "To complete the party? Or will he choose to sup with our friends yonder? It is for him to say. I confess, for my part," with an awful smile, "their hospitality seems a trifle crude, and boisterous."
Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered. The same horde which had so lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the street, and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the sounds that Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.
For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled. "You'll join us, I think?" he said with an undisguised sneer. "Then, after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we have changed places."
Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment. What the house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers. To such eyes of passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange indeed!
To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.
When he did speak it was to count the servants. "One, two, three, four, five," he said. "And two of them women. Mademoiselle is but poorly attended. Are there not"--and he turned to her--"some lacking?"
The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued. The third time, "Two went out," she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, "and have not returned."
"And have not returned?" he answered, raising his eyebrows. "Then I fear we must not wait for them. We might wait long!" And turning sharply to the panic-stricken servants, "Go you to your places! Do you not see that Mademoiselle waits to be served?"
The girl shuddered and spoke.
"Do you wish me," she muttered, in the same strangled tone, "to play this farce--to the end?"
"The end may be better, Mademoiselle, than you think," he answered, bowing. And then to the miserable servants, who hung back afraid to leave the shelter of their mistress's skirts, "To your places!" he cried. "Set Mademoiselle's chair. Are you so remiss on other days? If so," with a look of terrible meaning, "you will be the less loss! Now, Mademoiselle, may I have the honour? And when we are at table we can talk."
He extended his hand, and, obedient to his gesture, she moved to the place at the head of the table, but without letting her fingers come into contact with his. He gave no sign that he noticed this, but he strode to the place on her right, and signed to Tignonville to take that on her left. "Will you not be seated?" he continued. For she kept her feet.
She turned her head stiffly, until for the first time her eyes looked into his. A shudder more violent than the last shook her. "Had you not better--kill us at once?" she whispered. The blood had forsaken even her lips. Her face was the face of a statue--white, beautiful, lifeless.
"I think not," he said gravely. "Be seated, and let us hope for the best. And you, sir," he continued, turning to Carlat, "serve your mistress with wine. She needs it."
The steward filled for her, and then for each of the men, his shaking hand spilling as much as it poured. Nor was this strange. Above the din and uproar of the street, above the crash of distant doors, above the tocsin that still rang from the reeling steeple of St. Germain's, the great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its note of doom upon the town. A woman crouching at the end of the chamber burst into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes' terrible eye, was mute again.
Tignonville found voice at last. "Have they--killed the Admiral?" he muttered, his eyes on the table.
"M. Coligny! An hour ago."
"And Teligny?"
"Him also."
"M. de Rochefoucauld?"
"They are dealing with M. le Comte now, I believe," Tavannes answered. "He had his chance, and cast it away." And he began to eat.
The man at the table shuddered. The woman continued to look before her, but her lips moved as if she prayed. Suddenly a rush of feet, a roar of voices surged past the window; for a moment the glare of the torches which danced ruddily on the walls of the room, showed a severed head borne above the multitude on a pike. Mademoiselle, with a low cry, made an effort to rise, but Count Hannibal grasped her wrist and she sank back half fainting. Then the nearer clamour sank a little, and the bells, unchallenged, flung their iron tongues above the maddened city. In the east the dawn was growing; soon its grey light would fall on cold hearths, on battered doors and shattered weapons, on hordes of wretches drunk with greed and hate.
When he could be heard, "What are you going to do with us?" the man asked hoarsely.
"That depends," Count Hannibal replied after a moment's thought.
"On what?"
"On Mademoiselle de Vrillac."
The other's eyes gleamed with passion. He leaned forward. "What has she to do with it?" he cried. And he stood up and sat down again in a breath.
Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with his harsh visage. "I will answer that question by another question," he replied. "How many are there in the house, my friend?"
"You can count."
Tavannes counted again. "Seven?" he said.
Tignonville nodded impatiently.
"Seven lives?"
"Well?"
"Well, Monsieur, you know the King's will?"
"I can guess it," the other replied furiously. And he cursed the King, and the King's mother, calling her Jezebel.
"You can guess it?" Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as if that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold blood, "Nay, you know it! You heard it from the archer at the door. You heard him say, 'No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for child. So says the King.' You heard it, but you fence with me. Foucauld, with whom his Majesty played to-night, hand to hand and face to face--Foucauld is dead! And you think to live? You?" he continued, lashing himself into passion. "I know not by what chance you came where I saw you an hour gone, nor by what chance you came by that and that"--pointing with accusing finger to the badges the Huguenot wore. "But this I know! I have but to cry your name from yonder casement, nay, Monsieur, I have but to stand aside when the mob go their rounds from house to house, as they will go presently, and you will perish as certainly as you have hitherto escaped!"
For the second time Mademoiselle turned and looked at him. "Then," she whispered, with white lips, "to what end this--mockery?"
"To the end that seven lives may be saved, Mademoiselle," he answered, bowing.
"At a price?" she muttered.
"At a price," he answered. "A price which women do not find it hard to pay--at Court. 'Tis paid every day for pleasure or a whim, for rank or the entrée, for robes and gewgaws. Few, Mademoiselle, are privileged to buy a life; still fewer, seven!"
She began to tremble. "I would rather die--seven times!" she cried, her voice quivering. And she tried to rise, but sat down again.
"And these?" he said, indicating the servants.
"Far, far rather!" she repeated passionately.
"And Monsieur? And Monsieur!" he urged with stern persistence, while his eyes passed lightly from her to Tignonville and back to her again, their depths inscrutable. "If you love Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and I believe you do----"
"I can die with him!" she cried.
"And he with you!"
She writhed in her chair.
"And he with you?" Count Hannibal repeated, with emphasis; and he thrust forward his head. "For that is the question. Think, think, Mademoiselle. It is in my power to save from death him whom you love; to save you; to save this canaille, if it so please you. It is in my power to save him, to save you, to save all; and I will save all--at a price! If, on the other hand, you deny me that price, I will as certainly leave all to perish, as perish they will, before the sun that is now rising sets to-night!"
Mademoiselle looked straight before her, the flicker of a dreadful prescience in her eyes. "And the price?" she muttered. "The price?"
"You, Mademoiselle."
"Yes, you! Nay, why fence with me?" he continued gently. "You knew it, you have said it. You have read it in my eyes these seven days."
She did not speak, move, or seem to breathe. As he said, she had foreseen, she had known the answer. But Tignonville, it seemed, had not. He sprang to his feet. "M. de Tavannes," he cried, "you are a villain!"
"Monsieur?"
"You are a villain! But you shall pay for this!" the young man continued vehemently. "You shall not leave this room alive! You shall pay for this insult!"
"Insult?" Tavannes answered in apparent surprise; and then, as if comprehension broke upon him, "Ah! Monsieur mistakes me," he said, with a generous sweep of his hand. "And Mademoiselle also, perhaps? Oh! be content, she shall have bell, book, and candle; she shall be tied as tight as Holy Church can tie her! Or, if she please, and one survive, she shall have a priest of her own church--you call it a church? She shall have whichever of the two will serve her better. 'Tis one to me! But for paying me, Monsieur," he continued with irony in voice and manner; "when, I pray you? In Eternity! For if you refuse my offer, you have done with time. Now? I have but to sound this whistle"--he touched a silver whistle which hung at his breast--"and there are those within hearing will do your business before you make two passes. Dismiss the notion, sir, and understand. You are in my power. Paris runs with blood, as noble as yours, as innocent as hers. If you would not perish with the rest, decide! And quickly! For what you have seen are but the forerunners, what you have heard are but the gentle whispers that predict the gale. Do not parley too long; so long that even I may no longer save you."
"I would rather die!" Mademoiselle moaned, her face covered. "I would rather die!"
"And see him die?" he answered quietly. "And see these die? Think, think, child!"
"You will not do it!" she gasped. She shook from head to foot.
"I shall do nothing," he answered firmly. "I shall but leave you to your fate, and these to theirs. In the King's teeth I dare save my wife and her people; but no others. You must choose--and quickly."
One of the frightened women--it was Mademoiselle's tiring-maid, a girl called Javette--made a movement, as if to throw herself at her mistress's feet. Tignonville drove her to her place with a word. He turned to Count Hannibal. "But, M. le Comte," he said, "you must be mad! Mad, to wish to marry her in this way! You do not love her. You do not want her. What is she to you more than other women?"
"What is she to you more than other women?" Tavannes retorted in a tone so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch of colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them, the prize of the contest. "What is she more to you than other women? Is she more? And yet--you want her!"
"She is more to me," Tignonville answered.
"Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. "Is she? But we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise. Enough for you that I do want her. Enough for you that I will have her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes--or I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!"
"Ah, God!" she moaned. "The willing wife!"
"Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly. "Or no man's wife!"
In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into the Rue St. Honoré; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St. Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was growing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day would be here, giving up the lurking fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and stamping with legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.
And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy, escape more hard. Already they were killing on the bridge where the rich goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river. They were killing at the Louvre, in the courtyard under the King's eyes, and below the windows of the Médicis. They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denis and St. Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelled the hand. From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath, and foreboding. From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from the Boucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretched creatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and where they listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of the armed bands whose business it was to go from street to street, and house to house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris the high justice of the King.
It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street while Tavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerful advocate. As the deep "A bas! A bas!" rolled like thunder along the fronts of the houses, as the more strident "Tuez! Tuez!" drew nearer and nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flicker on the shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way. Madame Carlat, shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; the tiring-maid, Javette, flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle's knees, and, writhing herself about them, shrieked to her to save her, only to save her! One of the men moved forward on impulse, as if he would close the shutters; and only old Carlat remained silent, praying mutely with moving lips and a stern, set face.
And Count Hannibal? As the glare of the links in the street grew brighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate. He stilled the shrieking woman by a glance. "Choose! Mademoiselle, and quickly!" he said. "For I can only save my wife and her people! Quick, for the pinch is coming, and 'twill be no boy's play."
A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before the window seconded his words.
"Quick, Mademoiselle!" he cried. And his breath came a little faster. "Quick, before it be too late! Will you save life, or will you kill!"
She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him. But he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look. "Monsieur has done what he can to save himself," he said with a sneer. "He has donned the livery of the King's servants; he has said, 'Whoever perishes, I will live!' But--"
"Curse you!" the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore the cross from his cap and flung it on the ground. He seized his white sleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow. Then, when it hung by the string only, he held his hand.
"Curse you!" he cried furiously. "I will not at your bidding! I may save her yet! I will save her!"
"Fool!" Tavannes answered--but his words were barely audible above the deafening uproar. "Can you fight a thousand? Look! Look!" and seizing the other's wrist he pointed to the window. The street glowed like a furnace in the red light of torches, raised on poles above a sea of heads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces, and tossing arms which swept on and on, and on and by. For a while it seemed that the torrent would flow past them and would leave them safe. Then came a check, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the torches reeled to and fro, and finally with a dull roar of "Open! Open!" the mob faced about to the house and the lighted window.
For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook a little. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the disordered table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims before they tore them to pieces. "Open! Open!" the mob howled: and a man dashed in the window with his pike.
In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of a second. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame the words, would they have been audible. But something she must have looked, and something of import, though no other than he marked or understood it. For in a flash he was at the window and his hand was raised for silence.
"Back!" he thundered. "Back, knaves!" And he whistled shrilly. "Do what you will," he continued in the same tone, "but not here! Pass on! Pass on!--do you hear?"
But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence brutal and unquestioning they continued to howl "Open! Open!" while the man who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it. Then laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot against the wall below.
Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed to dilate with the fury and violence of his character. "Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my riders and scatter you? Must I flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes, beware of me! I have claws and teeth and I bite!" he continued, the scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he flung them. "Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where I am! Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man! I will flay your backs. Go! go! I am Tavannes!"
But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As many more tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window, and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan, the cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led the way.
Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them, his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple, raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary's inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his. The dwarf saw the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too late. A flash, a scream, and the wretch, shot through the throat, flung up his hands, and fell back into the arms of a lean man in black who had lent him his shoulder to ascend.
For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the room. There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the Huguenots were resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to guard the back and some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. But when the fumes cleared away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as it had been. Count Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim smile on his lips.
"Who comes next!" he cried in a tone of mockery. "I have more pistols!" And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" he went on. "You scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do you think to beard me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I am Tavannes, and this is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in it, you should not touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, I say again, while you may! Seek women and children, and kill them. But not here!"
For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silenced them. Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer--the roar of an arquebuse. The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal's head, and, splashing the plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to the ground.
Tavannes laughed. "Bungler!" he cried. "Were you in my troop I would dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But you weary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?" And he lifted a pistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the one he had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp. "I must teach you, must I?" he continued with scorn. "Here Bigot, Badelon, drive me these blusterers! Rid the street of them! A Tavannes! A Tavannes!"
Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports. But as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had stood motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the right flank of the crowd. The surprise for those nearest them was complete. With the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold steel in fancy between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how many pursued, or if any pursuit there was. For a moment the mob, which a few minutes before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might have quailed before it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.
And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and sweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it, and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this concourse. And these with threats and curses and gleaming eyes stood fast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. The check thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. They rallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in their turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their defence, the one before the window the other before the door.
Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches a play; with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had been dropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddled form prone in the gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes' men. They looked to the window, and muttered among themselves. It was plain that they had no stomach for a fight with the Church, and were anxious for the order to withdraw.
But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the cowls, they feared him more. Meanwhile the speaker's eloquence rose higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house. The mob groaned, and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose corselets rattled under the shower. The priest seized that moment. He sprang to the ground, and to the front. He caught up his robe and waved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--were swept away like straws upon the tide.
But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired two pistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he whistled.
Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way back--as they were doing to the best of their power--or he had resources still unseen, was not to be known. For as the smoke began to rise, and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts of the crowd came charging helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of galloping, shrieking, cursing horsemen, attended by twice as many footmen, who clung to their stirrups or to the tails of the horses, and yelled and whooped, and struck in unison with the maddened riders.
"On! on!" the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming at the mouth. "Bleed in August, bleed in May! Kill!" And he fired a pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing, plunging charger.
"Kill! Kill!" cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords, and rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation. "Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
"On! On!" cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fled every way before his reckless onset. "Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were ridden down, and this for an instant checked the riders. Before they could pass on, "Ohé!" cried Count Hannibal from his window. "Ohé!" with a shout of laughter, "ride over them, dear brother! Make me a clean street for my wedding!"
Marshal Tavannes--for he, the hero of Jarnac, was the leader of this wild orgy--turned that way, and strove to rein in his horse. "What ails them?" he cried, as the maddened animal reared upright, its iron hoofs striking fire from the slippery pavement.
"They are rearing like thy Bayard!" Count Hannibal answered. "Whip them, whip them for me! Tavannes! Tavannes!"
"What? This canaille!"
"Ay, that canaille!"
"Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" the Marshal replied, and spurred his horse among the rabble, who had fled to the sides of the street and now strove hard to efface themselves against the walls. "Begone, dogs; begone!" he cried, still hunting them. And then, "You would bite, would you?" And snatching another pistol from his boot, he fired it among them, careless whom he hit. "Ha! ha! That stirs you, does it!" he continued as the wretches fled headlong. "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes! On! On!"
Suddenly, from a doorway near at hand, a sombre figure darted into the roadway, caught the Marshal's rein, and for a second checked his course. The priest--for a priest it was, Father Pezelay, the same who had addressed the mob--held up a warning hand. "Halt!" he cried, with burning eyes. "Halt, my lord! It is written, thou shalt not spare the Canaanitish woman. 'Tis not to spare the King has given command and a sword, but to kill! 'Tis not to harbour, but to smite! To smite!"
"Then smite I will!" the Marshal retorted, and with the butt of his pistol struck the zealot down. Then, with as much indifference as he would have treated a Huguenot, he spurred his horse over him, with a mad laugh at his jest. "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" he yelled. "Touches Tavannes! On! On! Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
"On!" shouted his followers, striking about them in the same desperate fashion. They were young nobles who had spent the night feasting at the Palace, and, drunk with wine and mad with excitement, had left the Louvre at daybreak to rouse the city. "A Jarnac! A Jarnac!" they cried, and some saluted Count Hannibal as they passed. And so, shouting and spurring and following their leader, they swept away down the now empty street, carrying terror and a flame wherever their horses bore them that morning.
Tavannes, his hands on the ledge of the shattered window, leaned out laughing, and followed them with his eyes. A moment, and the mob was gone, the street was empty; and one by one, with sheepish faces, his pikemen emerged from the doorways and alleys in which they had taken refuge. They gathered about the three huddled forms which lay prone and still in the gutter: or, not three--two. For even as they approached them, one, the priest, rose slowly and giddily to his feet. He turned a face bleeding, lean, and relentless towards the window at which Tavannes stood. Solemnly, with the sign of the cross, and with uplifted hands, he cursed him in bed and at board, by day and by night, in walking, in riding, in standing, in the day of battle, and at the hour of death. The pikemen fell back appalled, and hid their eyes; and those who were of the north crossed themselves, and those who came from the south bent two fingers horse-shoe fashion. But Hannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in his moustache, his teeth showing, and bade them move that carrion to a distance, for it would smell when the sun was high. Then he turned his back on the street, and looked into the room.
The movements of the women had overturned two of the candles; a third had guttered out. The three which still burned, contending pallidly with the daylight that each moment grew stronger, imparted to the scene the air of a debauch too long sustained. The disordered board, the wan faces of the servants cowering in their corner, Mademoiselle's frozen look of misery, all increased the likeness; which a common exhaustion so far strengthened that when Tavannes turned from the window, and, flushed with his triumph, met the others' eyes, his seemed the only vigour, and he the only man in the company. True, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the collapse of his victims, there burned passions, hatreds, repulsions, as fierce as the hidden fires of the volcano; but for the time they smouldered ash-choked and inert.
He flung the discharged pistols on the table. "If yonder raven speak truth," he said, "I am like to pay dearly for my wife, and have short time to call her wife. The more need, Mademoiselle, for speed, therefore. You know the old saying, 'Short signing, long seisin? Shall it be my priest, or your minister?"
M. de Tignonville started forward. "She promised nothing!" he cried. And he struck his hand on the table.
Count Hannibal smiled, his lip curling. "That," he replied, "is for Mademoiselle to say."
"But if she says it? If she says it, Monsieur? What then?"
Tavannes drew forth a comfit-box, such as it was the fashion of the day to carry, as men of a later time carried a snuff-box. He slowly chose a prune. "If she says it?" he answered. "Then M. de Tignonville has regained his sweetheart. And M. de Tavannes has lost his bride."
"You say so!"
"Yes. But----"
"But what?"
"But she will not say it," Tavannes replied coolly.
"Why not?"
"Why not?"
"Yes, Monsieur, why not?" the younger man repeated trembling.
"Because, M. de Tignonville, it is not true."
"But she did not speak!" Tignonville retorted, with passion--the futile passion of the bird which beats its wings against a cage. "She did not speak. She could not promise, therefore."
Tavannes ate the prune slowly, seemed to give a little thought to its flavour, approved it a true Agen plum, and at last spoke. "It is not for you to say whether she promised," he returned drily, "nor for me. It is for Mademoiselle."
"You leave it to her?"
"I leave it to her to say whether she promised."
"Then she must say No!" Tignonville cried in a tone of triumph and relief. "For she did not speak. Mademoiselle, listen!" he continued, turning with outstretched hands and appealing to her with passion. "Do you hear? Do you understand? You have but to speak to be free! You have but to say the word, and Monsieur lets you go! In God's name, speak! Speak then, Clotilde! Oh!" with a gesture of despair, as she did not answer, but continued to sit stony and hopeless, looking straight before her, her hands picking convulsively at the fringe of her girdle. "She does not understand! Fright has stunned her! Be merciful, Monsieur. Give her time to recover, to know what she does. Fright has turned her brain."
Count Hannibal smiled. "I knew her father and her uncle," he said, "and in their time the Vrillacs were not wont to be cowards. Monsieur forgets, too," he continued with fine irony, "that he speaks of my betrothed."
"It is a lie!"
Tavannes raised his eyebrows. "You are in my power," he said. "For the rest, if it be a lie, Mademoiselle has but to say so."
"You hear him?" Tignonville cried. "Then speak, Mademoiselle! Clotilde, speak! Say you never spoke, you never promised him!"
The young man's voice quivered with indignation, with rage, with pain; but most, if the truth be told, with shame--the shame of a position strange and unparalleled. For in proportion as the fear of death instant and violent was lifted from him, reflection awoke, and the situation in which he stood took uglier shape. It was not so much love that cried to her, love that suffered, anguished by the prospect of love lost; as in the highest natures it might have been. Rather it was the man's pride which suffered; the pride of a high spirit which found itself helpless between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so false that hereafter men might say of the unfortunate that he had bartered his mistress for his life. He had not! But he had perforce to stand by; he had to be passive under stress of circumstances, and by the sacrifice, if she consummated it, he would in fact be saved.
There was the pinch. No wonder that he cried to her in a voice which roused even the servants from their lethargy of fear. "Say it!" he cried. "Say it, before it be too late. Say you did not promise!"
Slowly she turned her face to him. "I cannot," she whispered; "I cannot. Go," she continued, a spasm distorting her features. "Go, Monsieur. Leave me. It is over."
"What?" he exclaimed. "You promised him?"
She bowed her head.
"Then," the young man cried, in a transport of resentment, "I will be no part of the price. See! There! And there!" He tore the white sleeve wholly from his arm, and, rending it in twain, flung it on the floor and trampled on it. "It shall never be said that I stood by and let you buy my life! I go into the street and I take my chance." And he turned to the door.
But Tavannes was before him. "No!" he said; "you will stay here, M. de Tignonville!" And he set his back against the door.
The young man looked at him, his face convulsed with passion. "I shall stay here?" he cried. "And why, Monsieur? What is it to you if I choose to perish?"
"Only this," Tavannes retorted. "I am answerable to Mademoiselle now, in an hour I shall be answerable to my wife--for your life. Live, then, Monsieur; you have no choice. In a month you will thank me--and her."
"I am your prisoner?"
"Precisely."
"And I must stay here--to be tortured?" Tignonville cried.
Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled. Sudden stormy changes, from indifference to ferocity, from irony to invective, were characteristic of the man. "Tortured!" he repeated grimly. "You talk of torture while Piles and Pardaillan, Teligny and Rochefoucauld lie dead in the street! While your cause sinks withered in a night, like a gourd! While your servants fall butchered, and France rises round you in a tide of blood! Bah!"--with a gesture of disdain--"you make me also talk, and I have no love for talk, and small time. Mademoiselle, you at least act and do not talk. By your leave I return in an hour, and I bring with me--shall it be my priest, or your minister?"
She looked at him with the face of one who awakes slowly to the full horror, the full dread, of her position. For a moment she did not answer. Then, "A minister," she murmured, her voice scarcely audible.
He nodded. "A minister?" he said lightly. "Very well, if I can find one." And walking to the shattered, gaping casement--through which the cool morning air blew into the room and gently stirred the hair of the unhappy girl--he said some words to the man on guard outside. Then he turned to the door, but on the threshold he paused, looked with a strange expression at the pair, and signed to Carlat and the servants to go out before him.
"Up, and lie close above!" he growled. "Open a window or look out, and you will pay dearly for it! Do you hear? Up! Up! You, too, old crop-ears. What! would you?"--with a sudden glare as Carlat hesitated--"that is better! Mademoiselle, until my return."
He saw them all out, followed them, and closed the door on the two; who, left together, alone with the gaping window and the disordered feast, maintained a strange silence. The girl, gripping one hand in the other as if to quell her rising horror, sat looking before her, and seemed barely to breathe. The man, leaning against the wall at a little distance, bent his eyes not on her, but on the floor, his face gloomy and distorted.
His first thought should have been of her and for her; his first impulse to console, if he could not save her. His it should have been to soften, were that possible, the fate before her; to prove to her by words of farewell, the purest and most sacred, that the sacrifice she was making, not to save her own life but the lives of others, was appreciated by him who paid with her the price.
And all these things, and more, may have been in M. de Tignonville's mind; they may even have been uppermost in it, but they found no expression. The man remained sunk in a sombre reverie. He had the appearance of thinking of himself, not of her; of his own position, not of hers. Otherwise he must have looked at her, he must have turned to her; he must have owned the subtle attraction of her unspoken appeal when she drew a deep breath and slowly turned her eyes on him, mute, asking, waiting what he should offer.
Surely he should have! Yet it was long before he responded. He sat buried in thought of himself, and his position, the vile, the unworthy position in which her act had placed him. At length the constraint of her gaze wrought on him, or his thoughts became unbearable, and he looked up and met her eyes, and with an oath he sprang to his feet.
"It shall not be!" he cried, in a tone low, but full of fury. "You shall not do it! I will kill him first! I will kill him with this hand! Or----" a step took him to the window, a step brought him back--ay, brought him back exultant, and with a changed face. "Or better, we will thwart him yet. See, Mademoiselle, do you see? Heaven is merciful! For a moment the cage is open!" His eyes shone with excitement, the sweat of sudden hope stood on his brow as he pointed to the unguarded casement. "Come! it is our one chance!" And he caught her by her arm, and strove to draw her to the window.
But she hung back, staring at him. "Oh, no, no!" she cried.
"Yes, yes! I say!" he responded. "You do not understand. The way is open! We can escape, Clotilde, we can escape!"
"I cannot! I cannot!" she wailed, still resisting him.
"You are afraid?"
"Afraid?" she repeated the word in a tone of wonder. "No, but I cannot. I promised him. I cannot. And, O God!" she continued, in a sudden outburst of grief, as the sense of general loss, of the great common tragedy broke on her and whelmed for the moment her private misery. "Why should we think of ourselves? They are dead, they are dying, who were ours, whom we loved! Why should we think to live? What does it matter how it fares with us? We cannot be happy. Happy?" she continued wildly. "Are any happy now? Or is the world all changed in a night? No, we could not be happy. And at least you will live, Tignonville. I have that to console me."
"Live!" he responded vehemently. "I live? I would rather die a thousand times. A thousand times rather than live shamed! Than see you sacrificed to that devil! Than go out with a brand on my brow, for every man to point at me! I would rather die a thousand times!"
"And do you think that I would not?" she answered, shivering. "Better, far better die than--than live with him!"
"Then why not die?"
She stared at him, wide-eyed, and a sudden stillness possessed her. "How?" she whispered. "What do you mean?"
"That!" he said. As he spoke, he raised his hand and signed to her to listen. A sullen murmur, distant as yet, but borne to the ear on the fresh morning air, foretold the rising of another storm. The sound grew in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she misunderstood him. "O God!" she cried, out of the agony of nerves overwrought, "will that bell never stop? Will it never stop? Will no one stop it?"
"'Tis not the bell!" he cried, seizing her hand as if to focus her attention. "It is the mob you hear. They are returning. We have but to stand a moment at this open window, we have but to show ourselves to them, and we need live no longer! Mademoiselle! Clotilde!--if you mean what you say, if you are in earnest, the way is open!"
"And we shall die--together!"
"Yes, together. But have you the courage?"
"The courage!" she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her face. "The courage were needed to live. The courage were needed to do that. I am ready, quite ready. It can be no sin! To live with that in front of me were the sin! Come!" For the moment she had forgotten her people, her promise, all! It seemed to her that death would absolve her from all. "Come!"
He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward along the Rue St. Honoré, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers; their eyes met, and he would have kissed her.
She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her eyes half shut. "No!" she murmured. "No! While I live I am his. But we die together, Tignonville! We die together. It will not last long, will it? And afterwards----"
She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and over her features came a far-away look; such a look as that which on the face of another Huguenot lady, Philippine de Luns--vilely done to death in the Place Maubert fourteen years before--silenced the ribald jests of the lowest rabble in the world. An hour or two earlier, awed by the abruptness of the outburst, Mademoiselle had shrunk from her fate; she had known fear. Now that she stood out voluntarily to meet it, she, like many a woman before and since, feared no longer. She was lifted out of and above herself.
But death was long in coming. Some cause beyond their knowledge stayed the onrush of the mob along the street. The din, indeed, persisted, deafened, shook them; but the crowd seemed to be at a stand a few doors down the Rue St. Honoré. For a half-minute, a long half-minute, which appeared an age, it drew no nearer. Would it draw nearer? Would it come on? Or would it turn again?
The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of the man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer. The sweat rose on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as he stood listening and waiting. It is possible that when he had said a minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark. Or it is possible that he had meant his words to the full. But in this case he had not pictured what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive endurance. He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier; but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to women than to men, more hardly to men than to women. Yet had the crisis come quickly he might have met it. But he had to wait, and to wait with that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not prepared. A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man? His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither. Was it even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of the girl's silly persistence? Too late to----? Her eyes were closed, she hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know until afterwards. And afterwards she would thank him! Afterwards--meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still the crowd hung back and did not come.
He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving the Rue St. Honoré turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to emerge in the Rue du Roule. If he could gain that passage unseen by the mob! He would gain it. With a swift movement, his mind made up, he took a step forward. He tightened his grasp of the girl's waist, and, seizing with his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had torn from its setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself. One long step would land him in the street.
At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation. She opened her eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.
He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her after him. But it was not this betrayed him. It was his face, which in an instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life! She struggled upright and strove to free herself. But he had the purchase of the bar, and by this time he was furious as well as determined. Whether she would or no, he would save her, he would drag her out. Then, as consciousness fully returned, she, too, took fire. "No!" she cried, "I will not!" and she struggled more violently.
"You shall!" he retorted between his teeth. "You shall not perish here."
But she had her hands free, and as he spoke she thrust him from her passionately, desperately, with all her strength. He had his one foot in the air at the moment, and in a flash it was done. With a cry of rage he lost his balance, and, still holding the bar, reeled backwards through the window; while Mademoiselle, panting and half fainting, recoiled--recoiled into the arms of Hannibal de Tavannes, who, unseen by either, had entered the room a long minute before. From the threshold, and with a smile, all his own, he had watched the contest and the result.