Count Hannibal by Stanley J. Weyman

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"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--

"Ohe!" cried Count Hannibal from his window. "Ohe!" 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.

CHAPTER VII. IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.

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 dryly, "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 muttered, 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 eye 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. Honore, 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; 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, Philippa 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. Honore. 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. Honore 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.

CHAPTER VIII. TWO HENS AND AN EGG.

M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of
things he would have lain where he was, and groaned. But when a man has
once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at his shoulder. He
has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to set as great a
distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself. So it was with
the Huguenot. Shot suddenly into the full publicity of the street, he
knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape; and he was on
his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter of his fall had
travelled the length of three houses.

The rabble were still a hundred paces away, piled up and pressed about a
house where men were being hunted as men hunt rats. He saw that he was
unnoted, and apprehension gave place to rage. His thoughts turned back
hissing hot to the thing that had happened, and in a paroxysm of shame he
shook his fist at the gaping casement and the sneering face of his rival,
dimly seen in the background. If a look would have killed Tavannes--and
her--it had not been wanting.

For it was not only the man M. de Tignonville hated at this moment; he
hated Mademoiselle also, the unwitting agent of the other's triumph. She
had thrust him from her; she had refused to be guided by him; she had
resisted, thwarted, shamed him. Then let her take the consequences. She
willed to perish: let her perish!

He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, the
proof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of that courage
to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himself provoked the
trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's fire burns up the
dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discovery that in an heroic hour
he was no hero that gave force to his passionate gesture, and next moment
sent him storming down the beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his
heart a maelstrom of fierce vows and fiercer menaces.

He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go. His
lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of his faith
whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond the
religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yet the
streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge of peril; he
lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And, whether he
walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers bold enough to
take his life.

The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the alley-
end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set for death
in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end which faced his
hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in every distant
step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to his discovery. And
while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to form some plan.

In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country no
safety. And how could he gain the open country? If he succeeded in
reaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a task of
difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guard on
the alert. At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river; and
at the notion hope awoke. It was possible that the massacre had not
extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, the Huguenots
who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, with the men of
the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even to turn the
tables on the Parisians.

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