Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

Even as he sat down, a second flower struck him more sharply in the face, and this time he darted not to the window but to the door. He opened it quickly and looked out, but again he was too late.

"I shall catch you presently, ma reine!" he murmured tenderly, with intent to be heard. And he closed the door. But, wiser this time, he waited with his hand on the latch until he heard the rustling of a skirt, and saw the line of light at the foot of the door darkened by a shadow. That moment he flung the door wide, and, clasping the wearer of the skirt in his arms, kissed her lips before she had time to resist.

Then he fell back as if he had been shot! For the wearer of the skirt, she whom he had kissed, was Madame St. Lo's woman, and behind her stood Madame herself, laughing, laughing, laughing with all the gay abandonment of her light little heart. "Oh, the gallant gentleman!" she cried, and clapped her hands effusively. "Was ever recovery so rapid? Or triumph so speedy? Suzanne, my child, you surpass Venus. Your charms conquer before they are seen!"

M. de Tignonville had put poor Suzanne from him as if she burned; and hot and embarrassed, cursing his haste, he stood looking awkwardly at them. "Madame," he stammered at last, "you know quite well that I-"

"Seeing is believing!"

"That I thought it was you!"

"Oh, what I have lost!" she replied. And she looked archly at Suzanne, who giggled and tossed her head.

He was growing angry. "But, Madame," he protested, "you know-"

"I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!" Madame answered merrily. And she hummed,

"Ce fut le plus grand jour d'este Que m'embrassa la belle Suzanne!

"Oh, yes, I know what I know!" she repeated. And she fell again to laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her hung her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an affectation of modesty.

The young man glowered at them between rage and embarrassment. This was not the reception, nor this the hero's return to which he had looked forward. And a doubt began to take form in his mind. The mistress he had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another; nor forget in a twinkling the straits through which he had come to her, the hell from which he had plucked himself! Possibly the court ladies held love as cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, butts for their wit, and pegs on which to hang their laughter. But-but he began to doubt, and, perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.

"Madame," he said stiffly, "a jest is an excellent thing. But pardon me if I say that it is ill played on a fasting man."

Madame desisted from laughter that she might speak. "A fasting man?" she cried. "And he has eaten two partridges!"

"Fasting from love, Madame."

Madame St. Lo held up her hands. "And it's not two minutes since he took a kiss!"

He winced, was silent a moment, and then seeing that he got nothing by the tone he had adopted he cried for quarter. "A little mercy, Madame, as you are beautiful," he said, wooing her with his eyes. "Do not plague me beyond what a man can bear. Dismiss, I pray you, this good creature-whose charms do but set off yours as the star leads the eye to the moon-and make me the happiest man in the world by so much of your company as you will vouchsafe to give me."

"That may be but a very little," she answered, letting her eyes fall coyly, and affecting to handle the tucker of her low ruff. But he saw that her lip twitched; and he could have sworn that she mocked him to Suzanne, for the girl giggled.

Still by an effort he controlled his feelings. "Why so cruel?" he murmured, in a tone meant for her alone, and with a look to match. "You were not so hard when I spoke with you in the gallery, two evenings ago, Madame."

"Was I not?" she asked. "Did I look like this? And this?" And, languishing, she looked at him very sweetly after two fashions.

"Something."

"Oh, then I meant nothing!" she retorted with sudden vivacity. And she made a face at him, laughing under his nose. "I do that when I mean nothing, Monsieur! Do you see? But you are Gascon, and given, I fear, to flatter yourself."

Then he saw clearly that she played with him: and resentment, chagrin, pique got the better of his courtesy. "I flatter myself?" he cried, his voice choked with rage. "It may be I do now, Madame, but did I flatter myself when you wrote me this note?" And he drew it out and flourished it in her face. "Did I imagine when I read this? Or is it not in your hand? It is a forgery, perhaps," he continued bitterly. "Or it means nothing? Nothing, this note bidding me be at Madame St. Lo's at an hour before midnight-it means nothing? At an hour before midnight, Madame!"

"On Saturday night? The night before last night?"

"On Saturday night, the night before last night! But Madame knows nothing of it? Nothing, I suppose?"

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled cheerfully on him. "Oh, yes, I wrote it," she said. "But what of that, M. de Tignonville?"

"What of that?"

"Yes, Monsieur, what of that? Did you think it was written out of love for you?"

He was staggered for the moment by her coolness. "Out of what, then?" he cried hoarsely. "Out of what, then, if not out of love?"

"Why, out of pity, my little gentleman!" she answered sharply. "And trouble thrown away it seems. Love!" And she laughed so merrily and spontaneously it cut him to the heart. "No; but you said a dainty thing or two, and smiled a smile; and like a fool, and like a woman, I was sorry for the innocent calf that bleated so prettily on its way to the butcher's! And I would lock you up and save your life, I thought, until the blood-letting was over. Now you have it, M. de Tignonville, and I hope you like it."

Like it, when every word she uttered stripped him of the selfish illusions in which he had wrapped himself against the blasts of ill-fortune? Like it, when the prospect of her charms had bribed him from the path of fortitude, when for her sake he had been false to his mistress, to his friends, to his faith, to his cause? Like it, when he knew as he listened that all was lost, and nothing gained-not even this poor, unworthy, shameful compensation? Like it? No wonder that words failed him, and he glared at her in rage, in misery, in shame.

"Oh, if you don't like it," she continued, tossing her head after a momentary pause, "then you should not have come! It is of no profit to glower at me, Monsieur. You do not frighten me."

"I would-I would to God I had not come!" he groaned.

"And, I dare say, that you had never seen me-since you cannot win me!"

"That too," he exclaimed.

She was of an extraordinary levity, and at that after staring at him a moment she broke into shrill laughter. "A little more, and I'll send you to my cousin Hannibal!" she said. "You do not know how anxious he is to see you. Have you a mind," with a waggish look, "to play bride's man, M. de Tignonville? Or will you give away the bride? It is not too late, though soon it will be!"

He winced, and from red grew pale. "What do you mean?" he stammered. And, averting his eyes in shame, seeing now all the littleness, all the baseness of his position, "Has he-married her?" he continued.

"Ho, ho!" she cried in triumph. "I've hit you now, have I, Monsieur? I've hit you!" And mocking him, "Has he-married her?" she lisped. "No; but he will marry her, have no fear of that! He will marry her. He waits but to get a priest. Would you like to see what he says?" she continued, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. "I had a note from him yesterday. Would you like to see how welcome you'll be at the wedding?" And she flaunted a piece of paper before his eyes.

"Give it me," he said.

She let him seize it the while she shrugged her shoulders. "It's your affair, not mine," she said. "See it if you like, and keep it if you like. Cousin Hannibal wastes few words."

That was true, for the paper contained but a dozen or fifteen words, and an initial by way of signature. "I may need your shoveling to-morrow afternoon. Send him, and Tignonville in safeguard if he come. – H."

"I can guess what use he has for a priest," she said. "It is not to confess him, I warrant. It's long, I fear, since Hannibal told his beads."

M. de Tignonville swore. "I would I had the confessing of him!" he said between his teeth.

She clapped her hands in glee. "Why should you not?" she cried. "Why should you not? 'Tis time yet, since I am to send to-day and have not sent. Will you be the shaveling to go confess or marry him?" And she laughed recklessly. "Will you, M. de Tignonville? The cowl will mask you as well as another, and pass you through the streets better than a cut sleeve. He will have both his wishes, lover and clerk in one then. And it will be pull monk, pull Hannibal with a vengeance."

Tignonville gazed at her, and as he gazed courage and hope awoke in his eyes. What if, after all, he could undo the past? What if, after all, he could retrace the false step he had taken, and place himself again where he had been-by her side? "If you meant it!" he exclaimed, his breath coming fast. "If you only meant what you say, Madame."

"If?" she answered, opening her eyes. "And why should I not mean it?"

"Because," he replied slowly, "cowl or no cowl, when I meet your cousin-"

"'Twill go hard with him?" she cried, with a mocking laugh. "And you think I fear for him. That is it, is it?"

He nodded.

"I fear just so much for him!" she retorted with contempt. "Just so much!" And coming a step nearer to Tignonville she snapped her small white fingers under his nose. "Do you see? No, M. de Tignonville," she continued, "you do not know Count Hannibal if you think that he fears, or that any fear for him. If you will beard the lion in his den, the risk will be yours, not his!"

The young man's face glowed. "I take the risk!" he cried. "And I thank you for the chance; that, Madame, whatever betide. But-"

"But what?" she asked, seeing that he hesitated and that his face fell.

"If he afterwards learn that you have played him a trick," he said, "will he not punish you?"

"Punish me?"

He nodded.

Madame laughed her high disdain. "You do not yet know Hannibal de Tavannes," she said. "He does not war with women."

CHAPTER XI

A BARGAIN

It is the wont of the sex to snatch at an ell where an inch is offered, and to press an advantage in circumstances in which a man, acknowledging the claims of generosity, scruples to ask for more. The habit, now ingrained, may have sprung from long dependence on the male, and is one which a hundred instances, from the time of Judith downward, prove to be at its strongest where the need is greatest.

When Mademoiselle de Vrillac came out of the hour-long swoon into which her lover's defection had cast her, the expectation of the worst was so strong upon her that she could not at once credit the respite which Madame Carlat hastened to announce. She could not believe that she still lay safe, in her own room above stairs; that she was in the care of her own servants, and that the chamber held no presence more hateful than that of the good woman who sat weeping beside her.

As was to be expected, she came to herself sighing and shuddering, trembling with nervous exhaustion. She looked for him, as soon as she looked for any; and even when she had seen the door locked and double-locked, she doubted-doubted, and shook and hid herself in the hangings of the bed. The noise of the riot and rapine which prevailed in the city, and which reached the ear even in that locked room-and although the window, of paper, with an upper pane of glass, looked into a courtyard-was enough to drive the blood from a woman's cheeks. But it was fear of the house, not of the street, fear from within, not from without, which impelled the girl into the darkest corner and shook her wits. She could not believe that even this short respite was hers, until she had repeatedly heard the fact confirmed at Madame Carlat's mouth.

"You are deceiving me!" she cried more than once. And each time she started up in fresh terror. "He never said that he would not return until to-morrow!"

"He did, my lamb, he did!" the old woman answered with tears. "Would I deceive you?"

"He said he would not return?"

"He said he would not return until to-morrow. You had until to-morrow, he said."

"And then?"

"He would come and bring the priest with him," Madame Carlat replied sorrowfully.

"The priest? To-morrow!" Mademoiselle cried. "The priest!" and she crouched anew with hot eyes behind the hangings of the bed, and, shivering, hid her face.

But this for a time only. As soon as she had made certain of the respite, and that she had until the morrow, her courage rose, and with it the instinct of which mention has been made. Count Hannibal had granted a respite; short as it was, and no more than the barest humanity required, to grant one at all was not the act of the mere butcher who holds the trembling lamb, unresisting, in his hands. It was an act-no more, again be it said, than humanity required-and yet an act which bespoke an expectation of some return, of some correlative advantage. It was not in the part of the mere brigand. Something had been granted. Something short of the utmost in the captor's power had been exacted. He had shown that there were things he would not do.

Then might not something more be won from him? A further delay, another point; something, no matter what, which could be turned to advantage. With the brigand it is not possible to bargain. But who gives a little may give more; who gives a day may give a week; who gives a week may give a month. And a month? Her heart leapt up. A month seemed a lifetime, an eternity, to her who had but until to-morrow!

Yet there was one consideration which might have daunted a spirit less brave. To obtain aught from Tavannes it was needful to ask him, and to ask him it was needful to see him; and to see him before that to-morrow which meant so much to her. It was necessary, in a word, to run some risk; but without risk the card could not be played, and she did not hesitate. It might turn out that she was wrong, that the man was not only pitiless and without bowels of mercy, but lacked also the shred of decency for which she gave him credit, and on which she counted. In that case, if she sent for him-but she would not consider that case.

The position of the window, while it increased the women's safety, debarred them from all knowledge of what was going forward, except that which their ears afforded them. They had no means of judging whether Tavannes remained in the house or had sallied forth to play his part in the work of murder. Madame Carlat, indeed, had no desire to know anything. In that room above stairs, with the door double-locked, lay a hope of safety in the present, and of ultimate deliverance; there she had a respite from terror, as long as she kept the world outside. To her, therefore, the notion of sending for Tavannes, or communicating with him, came as a thunderbolt. Was her mistress mad? Did she wish to court her fate? To reach Tavannes they must apply to his riders, for Carlat and the men-servants were confined above. Those riders were grim, brutal men, who might resort to rudeness on their own account. And Madame, clinging in a paroxysm of terror to her mistress, suggested all manner of horrors, one on top of the other, until she increased her own terror tenfold. And yet, to do her justice, nothing that even her frenzied imagination suggested exceeded the things which the streets of Paris, fruitful mother of horrors, were witnessing at that very hour. As we now know.

For it was noon-or a little more-of Sunday, August the twenty-fourth, "a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently find leisure to kill and plunder." From the bridges, and particularly from the stone bridge of Notre Dame-while they lay safe in that locked room, and Tignonville crouched in his haymow-Huguenots less fortunate were being cast, bound hand and foot, into the Seine. On the river bank Spire Niquet, the bookman, was being burnt over a slow fire, fed with his own books. In their houses, Ramus the scholar and Goujon the sculptor-than whom Paris has neither seen nor deserved a greater-were being butchered like sheep; and in the Valley of Misery, now the Quai de la Megisserie, seven hundred persons who had sought refuge in the prisons were being beaten to death with bludgeons. Nay, at this hour-a little sooner or a little later, what matters it? – M. Tignonville's own cousin, Madame d'Yverne, the darling of the Louvre the day before, perished in the hands of the mob; and the sister of M. de Taverny, equally ill-fated, died in the same fashion, after being dragged through the streets.

Madame Carlat, then, went not a whit beyond the mark in her argument. But Mademoiselle had made up her mind, and was not to be dissuaded.

"If I am to be Monsieur's wife," she said with quivering nostrils, "shall I fear his servants?"

And opening the door herself, for the others would not, she called. The man who answered was a Norman; and short of stature, and wrinkled and low-browed of feature, with a thatch of hair and a full beard, he seemed the embodiment of the women's apprehensions. Moreover, his patois of the cider-land was little better than German to them; their southern, softer tongue was sheer Italian to him. But he seemed not ill-disposed, or Mademoiselle's air overawed him; and presently she made him understand, and with a nod he descended to carry her message.

Then Mademoiselle's heart began to beat; and beat more quickly when she heard his step-alas! she knew it already, knew it from all others-on the stairs. The table was set, the card must be played, to win or lose. It might be that with the low, opinion he held of women he would think her reconciled to her lot; he would think this an overture, a step towards kinder treatment, one more proof of the inconstancy of the lower and the weaker sex, made to be men's playthings. And at that thought her eyes grew hot with rage. But if it were so, she must still put up with it. She must still put up with it! She had sent for him, and he was coming-he was at the door!

He entered, and she breathed more freely. For once his face lacked the sneer, the look of smiling possession, which she had come to know and hate. It was grave, expectant, even suspicious; still harsh and dark, akin, as she now observed, to the low-browed, furrowed face of the rider who had summoned him. But the offensive look was gone, and she could breathe.

He closed the door behind him, but he did not advance into the room. "At your pleasure, Mademoiselle?" he said simply. "You sent for me, I think."

She was on her feet, standing before him with something of the submissiveness of Roxana before her conqueror. "I did," she said; and stopped at that, her hand to her side as if she could not continue. But presently in a low voice, "I have heard," she went on, "what you said, Monsieur, after I lost consciousness."

"Yes?" he said; and was silent. Nor did he lose his watchful look.

"I am obliged to you for your thought of me," she continued in a faint voice, "and I shall be still further obliged-I speak to you thus quickly and thus early-if you will grant me a somewhat longer time."

"Do you mean-if I will postpone our marriage?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"It is impossible!"

"Do not say that," she cried, raising her voice impulsively. "I appeal to your generosity. And for a short, a very short, time only."

"It is impossible," he answered quietly. "And for reasons, Mademoiselle. In the first place I can more easily protect my wife. In the second, I am even now summoned to the Louvre, and should be on my way thither. By to-morrow evening, unless I am mistaken in the business on which I am required, I shall be on my way to a distant province with royal letters. It is essential that our marriage take place before I go."

"Why?" she asked stubbornly.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask, Mademoiselle, after the events of last night? Because, if you please, I do not wish to share the fate of M. de Tignonville. Because in these days life is uncertain, and death too certain. Because it was our turn last night, and it may be the turn of your friends-to-morrow night!"

"Then some have escaped?" she cried.

He smiled. "I am glad to find you so shrewd," he replied. "In an honest wife it is an excellent quality. Yes, Mademoiselle; one or two."

"Who? Who? I pray you tell me."

"M. de Montgomery, who slept beyond the river, for one; and the Vidame, and some with him. M. de Biron, whom I count a Huguenot, and who holds the Arsenal in the King's teeth, for another. And a few more. Enough, in a word, Mademoiselle, to keep us wakeful. It is impossible, therefore, for me to postpone the fulfilment of your promise."

"A promise on conditions!" she retorted, in rage that she could win no more. And every line of her splendid figure, every tone of her voice flamed sudden, hot rebellion. "I do not go for nothing! You gave me the lives of all in the house, Monsieur! Of all!" she repeated with passion. "And all are not here! Before I marry you, you must show me M. de Tignonville alive and safe!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "He has taken himself off," he said. "It is naught to me what happens to him now."

"It is all to me!" she retorted.

At that he glared at her, the veins of his forehead swelling suddenly. But after a seeming struggle with himself he put the insult by, perhaps for future reckoning and account. "I did what I could," he said sullenly. "Had I willed it he had died there and then in the room below. I gave him his life. If he has risked it anew and lost it, it is naught to me."

"It was his life you gave me," she repeated stubbornly. "His life-and the others. But that is not all," she continued; "you promised me a minister."

He nodded, smiling sourly to himself, as if this confirmed a suspicion he had entertained. "Or a priest," he said.

"No, a minister."

"If one could be obtained. If not, a priest."

"No, it was to be at my will; and I will a minister! I will a minister!" she cried passionately. "Show me M. Tignonville alive, and bring me a minister of my faith, and I will keep my promise, M. de Tavannes. Have no fear of that. But otherwise, I will not."

"You will not?" he cried. "You will not?"

"No!"

"You will not marry me?"

"No!"

The moment she had said it fear seized her, and she could have fled from him, screaming. The flash of his eyes, the sudden passion of his face, burned themselves into her memory. She thought for a second that he would spring on her and strike her down. Yet though the women behind her held their breath, she faced him, and did not quail; and to that, she fancied, she owed it that he controlled himself. "You will not?" he repeated, as if he could not understand such resistance to his will-as if he could not credit his ears. "You will not?" But after that, when he had said it three times, he laughed; a laugh, however, with a snarl in it that chilled her blood.

"You bargain, do you?" he said. "You will have the last tittle of the price, will you? And have thought of this and that to put me off, and to gain time until your lover, who is all to you, come to save you? Oh, clever girl! clever! But have you thought where you stand-woman? Do you know that if I gave the word to my people they would treat you as the commonest baggage that tramps the Froidmantel? Do you know that it rests with me to save you, or to throw you to the wolves whose ravening you hear?" And he pointed to the window. "Minister? Priest?" he continued. "Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, I stand astonished at my moderation. You chatter to me of ministers and priests, and the one or the other, when it might be neither! When you are as much and as hopelessly in my power to-day as the wench in my kitchen! You! You flout me, and make terms with me! You!"

And he came so near her with his dark harsh face, his tone rose so menacing on the last word, that her nerves, shattered before, gave way, and, unable to control herself, she flinched with a low cry, thinking he would strike her.

He did not follow, nor move to follow; but he laughed a low laugh of content. And his eyes devoured her. "Ho! ho!" he said. "We are not so brave as we pretend to be, it seems. And yet you dared to chaffer with me? You thought to thwart me-Tavannes! Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, to what did you trust? To what did you trust? Ay, and to what do you trust?"