Count Hannibal | Page 4

the Admiral was
wounded by that scoundrel on Friday, they think all Paris is in a league
against us."
"And why not?" she asked, her cheek grown pale, her eyes reading his
eyes.
"Why not? Why, because it is a monstrous thing even to think of!"
Tignonville answered, with the confidence of one who did not use the
argument for the first time. "Could they insult the King more deeply
than by such a suspicion? A Borgia may kill his guests, but it was never
a practice of the Kings of France! Pardieu, I have no patience with
them! They may lodge where they please, across the river, or without
the walls if they choose, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec is good enough for me,
and the King's name sufficient surety!"
"I know you are not apt to be fearful," she answered, smiling; and she
looked at him with a woman's pride in her lover. "All the same, you
will not desert me again, sir, will you?"
He vowed he would not, kissed her hand, looked into her eyes; then
melting to her, stammering, blundering, he named Madame St. Lo. She
stopped him.

"There is no need," she said, answering his look with kind eyes, and
refusing to hear his protestations. "In a fortnight will you not be my
husband? How should I distrust you? It was only that while she talked,
I waited--I waited; and--and that Madame St. Lo is Count Hannibal's
cousin. For a moment I was mad enough to dream that she held you on
purpose. You do not think it was so?"
"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.
"Absurd! The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,
"you are like so many of our people! You think a Catholic capable of
the worst."
"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.
"That's over now, if people would only understand. This wedding has
put an end to all that. But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly;
and he stopped. "Instead, let me take you home."
"If you please. Carlat and the servants should be below."
He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with his
other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase, that
by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace. Here a mob of
armed servants, of lacqueys, and footboys, some bearing torches, and
some carrying their masters' cloaks and galoshes, loitered to and fro.
Had M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less
occupied with his own importance, he might have noted more than one
face which looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one
overt sneer at his expense. But in the business of summoning
Carlat--Mademoiselle de Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the
contemptuous "Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the
"Southern dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of
the King's brother. He was engaged in finding the steward, and in
aiding him to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a new
acquirement, which he had picked up since he came to Paris, he made a
way for her through the crowd. A moment, and the three, followed by
half a dozen armed servants, bearing pikes and torches, detached
themselves from the throng, and crossing the courtyard, with its rows

of lighted windows, passed out by the gate between the Tennis Courts,
and so into the Rue des Fosses de St. Germain.
Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still
contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of
St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after nine: the heat
of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint
distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make itself heard above
the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a subdued hum. As
Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the Cloister of St.
Germain, where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the leader of the
Huguenots, had been wounded, she pressed her escort's hand, and
involuntarily drew nearer to him. But he laughed at her.
"It was a private blow," he said, answering her unspoken thought. "It is
like enough the Guises sped it. But they know now what is the King's
will, and they have taken the hint and withdrawn themselves. It will not
happen again, Mademoiselle. For proof, see the guards"--they were
passing the end of the Rue Bethizy, in the corner house of which,
abutting on the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, Coligny had his lodgings--"whom
the King has placed for his security. Fifty