Count Hannibal. Stanley John Weyman

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!”