It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for
Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the
higher name--should so entirely possess the souls of those who harbour it
that the greatest events and the most astounding catastrophes, even
measures which set their mark for all time on a nation, are to them of
importance only so far as they affect the pursuit of the fair one.
As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes,
beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires of
his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or wonder.
He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughter-house, where for a week a
masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors and the
close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn garments,
broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps. But he saw all with eyes which
in all and everywhere, among living and dead, sought only Tignonville;
Tignonville first, and next a heretic minister, with enough of life in
him to do his office.
Probably it was to this that one man hunted through Paris owed his escape
that day. He sprang from a narrow passage full in Tavannes' view, and,
hair on end, his eyes starting from his head, ran blindly--as a hare will
run when chased--along the street to meet Count Hannibal's company. The
man's face was wet with the dews of death, his lungs seemed cracking, his
breath hissed from him as he ran. His pursuers were hard on him, and,
seeing him headed by Count Hannibal's party, yelled in triumph, holding
him for dead. And dead he would have been within thirty seconds had
Tavannes played his part. But his thoughts were elsewhere. Either he
took the poor wretch for Tignonville, or for the minister on whom his
mind was running; anyway he suffered him to slip under the belly of his
horse; then, to make matters worse, he wheeled to follow him in so
untimely and clumsy a fashion that his horse blocked the way and stopped
the pursuers in their tracks. The quarry slipped into an alley and
vanished. The hunters stood and blasphemed, and even for a moment seemed
inclined to resent the mistake. But Tavannes smiled; a broader smile
lightened the faces of the six iron-clad men behind him; and for some
reason the gang of ruffians thought better of it and slunk aside.
There are hard men, who feel scorn of the things which in the breasts of
others excite pity. Tavannes' lip curled as he rode on through the
streets, looking this way and that, and seeing what a King twenty-two
years old had made of his capital. His lip curled most of all when he
came, passing between the two tennis-courts, to the east gate of the
Louvre, and found the entrance locked and guarded, and all communication
between city and palace cut off. Such a proof of unkingly panic, in a
crisis wrought by the King himself, astonished him less a few minutes
later, when, the keys having been brought and the door opened, he entered
the courtyard of the fortress.
Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and
arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,
from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests
rose without ceasing. The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped
the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and
heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they
seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed
gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,
brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the
terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and
some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and
bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most
striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for
fresh excitement. In the space of time it took him to pass through them,
Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city;
that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had
escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the
pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the
fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then
entering by the Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the
Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead,
that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre,
that--
And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot
of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the
new facade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling
contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower
removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But what was this which lay
along the foot of the new Italian wall? This, round which some stood,
gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long
downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a
window?
Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of
buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much
spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical
laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the
court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she
turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung back,
giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting
Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and
a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was out again.
He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back to
the woman he had left weeping in the upper room. Then he turned about
again and stood to count the dead. He identified Piles, identified
Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers had robbed of
the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais. He made his reckoning with an
unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and stared, and moved from
one to another; had he not seen the slaughter about "_le petit homme_" at
Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched fields? But when a bystander,
smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest on Soubise, and with his finger
pointed the jest, he had the same hard unmoved face for the gibe as for
the dead. And the jester shrank away, abashed and perplexed by his stare
and his reticence.
Halfway up the staircase to the great gallery or guard-room above, Count
Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in drunken
slumber on a seat in a recess. In the gallery to which he passed on
without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with arquebusiers
and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking in whispers; or
peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the hall, where the
querulous voice of the King rose now and again above the hum. As
Tavannes moved that way, Nancay, in the act of passing out, booted and
armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.
"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he
dared betray. "The King has asked for you twice."
"I am going to him. And you? Whither in such a hurry, M. Nancay?"
"To Chatillon."
"On pleasant business?"
"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nancay replied, with unexpected
temper. "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a
grin. And he went on.
The gleam of malice in the man's eye warned Tavannes to pause. He looked
round for some one who might be in the secret, saw the Provost of the
Merchants, and approached him.
"What's amiss, M. le Charron?" he asked. "Is not the affair going as it
should?"
"'Tis about the Arsenal, M. le Comte," the Provost answered busily. "M.
de Biron is harbouring the vermin there. He has lowered the portcullis
and pointed his culverins over the gate and will not yield it or listen
to reason. The King would bring him to terms, but no one will venture
himself inside with the message. Rats in a trap, you know, bite hard,
and care little whom they bite."
"I begin to understand."
"Precisely, M. le Comte. His Majesty would have sent M. de Nancay. But
he elected to go to Chatillon, to seize the young brood there. The
Admiral's children, you comprehend."
"Whose teeth are not yet grown! He was wise."
"To be sure, M. de Tavannes, to be sure. But the King was annoyed, and
on top of that came a priest with complaints, and if I may make so bold
as to advise you, you will not--"
But Tavannes fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty, and
with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the warning which the other had
it in his mind to give. A moment and he reached the inner circle, and
there halted, disconcerted, nay taken aback. For as soon as he showed
his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro like a caged beast, before
a table at which three clerks knelt on cushions, espied him, and stood
still. With a glare of something like madness in his eyes, Charles
raised his hand, and with a shaking finger singled him out.
"So, by G-d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy. And
he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him. "You are
there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I tell you,
it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is said
everywhere Guise does all and serves God, and we follow because we must!
It's you, and such as you, are stumbling-blocks to our good folk of
Paris! Are you traitor, sirrah?" he continued with passion, "or are you
of our brother Alencon's opinions, that you traverse our orders to the
damnation of your soul and our discredit? Are you traitor? Or are you
heretic? Or what are you? God in heaven, will you answer me, man, or
shall I send you where you will find your tongue?"
"I know not of what your Majesty accuses me," Count Hannibal answered,
with a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders.
"I? 'Tis not I," the King retorted. His hair hung damp on his brow, and
he dried his hands continually; while his gestures had the ill-measured
and eccentric violence of an epileptic. "Here, you! Speak, father, and
confound him!"
Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest
whom his brother had ridden down that morning. Father Pezelay's pale
hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one
temple and part of his face. But below the bandage the flame of his eyes
was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue. To the King he had
come--for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's
presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance was
come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to grow
longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like. He stood there a fitting
representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles and his
successor--the last of a doomed line--alternately used as tool or feared
as master; and to which the most debased and the most immoral of courts
paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage. Even in the midst
of the drunken, shameless courtiers--who stood, if they stood for
anything, for that other influence of the day, the Renaissance--he was to
be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it. He knew that in the eyes
not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten who listened to him, a priest
was more sacred than a virgin, and a tonsure than all the virtues of
spotless innocence.
"Shall the King give with one hand and withdraw with the other?" the
priest began, in a voice hoarse yet strident, a voice borne high above
the crowd on the wings of passion. "Shall he spare of the best of the
men and the maidens whom God hath doomed, whom the Church hath devoted,
whom the King hath given? Is the King's hand shortened or his word
annulled that a man does as he forbiddeth and leaves undone what he
commandeth? Is God mocked? Woe, woe unto you," he continued, turning
swiftly, arms uplifted, towards Tavannes, "who please yourself with the
red and white of their maidens and take of the best of the spoil, sparing
where the King's word is 'Spare not'! Who strike at Holy Church with the
sword! Who--"
"Answer, sirrah!" Charles cried, spurning the floor in his fury. He
could not listen long to any man. "Is it so? Is it so? Do you do these
things?"
Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer, when a
thick, drunken voice rose from the crowd behind him.
"Is it what? Eh! Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot
eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the
obsequious circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the
King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay,
his hand on his sword. "Were you a priest ten times--"
"Silence!" Charles cried, almost foaming with rage at this fresh
interruption. "It's not he, fool! 'Tis your pestilent brother."
"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal answered with a
menacing gesture. He was sober enough, it appeared, to hear what was
said, but not to comprehend its drift; and this caused a titter, which
immediately excited his rage. He turned and seized the nearest laugher
by the ear. "Insolent!" he cried. "I will teach you to laugh when the
King speaks! Puppy! Who laughs at his Majesty or touches my brother has
to do with Tavannes!"
The King, in a rage that almost deprived him of speech, stamped the floor
twice.
"Idiot!" he cried. "Imbecile! Let the man go! 'Tis not he! 'Tis your
heretic brother, I tell you! By all the Saints! By the body of--" and
he poured forth a flood of oaths. "Will you listen to me and be silent!
Will you--your brother--"
"If he be not your Majesty's servant, I will kill him with this sword!"
the irrepressible Marshal struck in. "As I have killed ten to-day! Ten!"
And, staggering back, he only saved himself from falling by clutching
Chicot about the neck.
"Steady, my pretty Marechale!" the jester cried, chucking him under the
chin with one hand, while with some difficulty he supported him with the
other--for he, too, was far from sober--
"Pretty Margot, toy with me,
Maiden bashful--"
"Silence!" Charles cried, darting forth his long arms in a fury of
impatience. "God, have I killed every man of sense? Are you all gone
mad? Silence! Do you hear? Silence! And let me hear what he has to
say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal. "And look you, sirrah," he
continued with a curse, "see that it be to the purpose!"
"If it be a question of your Majesty's service," Tavannes answered, "and
obedience to your Majesty's orders, I am deeper in it than he who stands
there!" with a sign towards the priest. "I give my word for that. And I
will prove it."
"How, sir?" Charles cried. "How, how, how? How will you prove it?"
"By doing for you, sire, what he will not do!" Tavannes answered
scornfully. "Let him stand out, and if he will serve his Church as I
will serve my King--"
"Blaspheme not!" cried the priest.
"Chatter not!" Tavannes retorted hardily, "but do! Better is he," he
continued, "who takes a city than he who slays women! Nay, sire," he
went on hurriedly, seeing the King start, "be not angry, but hear me! You
would send to Biron, to the Arsenal? You seek a messenger, sire? Then
let the good father be the man. Let him take your Majesty's will to
Biron, and let him see the Grand Master face to face, and bring him to
reason. Or, if he will not, I will! Let that be the test!"
"Ay, ay!" cried Marshal de Tavannes, "you say well, brother! Let him!"
"And if he will not, I will!" Tavannes repeated. "Let that be the test,
sire."
The King wheeled suddenly to Father Pezelay. "You hear, father?" he
said. "What say you?"
The priest's face grew sallow, and more sallow. He knew that the walls
of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of
Biron's would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning
culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children, their
wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught but to
stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb from limb
before they died! The challenge, therefore, was one-sided and unfair;
but for that very reason it shook him. The astuteness of the man who,
taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him with dread. He
dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the offer. And
meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their beards, were on
him. At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which had lost its
boldness and assurance.
"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but
for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word, and
set at nought his Christian orders. For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or
no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.' For you go but to your
own, and your own will receive you!"
"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.
"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with passion. "His Majesty
knows whether I serve him."
"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve
me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood
of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in
mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow! Ay, you will!
you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with
a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as you! Foucauld was
better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my God!"
And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so
often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst
into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with
the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer
of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the
cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the
shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for
their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes,
trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.
One looked at another in consternation. Fear grew in eyes that a moment
before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic. If
_he_ changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed
on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe? Whose turn might it not
be to-morrow? Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done
this day? Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before,
shuddered and glanced behind them. It was as if the dead who lay stark
without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose
shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall;
and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold
breath in the living ears, "A reckoning! A reckoning! As I am, thou
shalt be!"
It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with his
hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward.
"Nay, sire," he cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and
seemed to challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed,
yet will not I! What we have done we have done! So be it! The dead are
dead! So be it! For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who
will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition! I have
said I will go, and I go, sire. And you, churchman," he continued,
turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to church! To
church, shaveling! Go, watch and pray for us! Fast and flog for us!
Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down! For it is all,
it seems, you will do for your King!"
Charles turned. "Silence, railer!" he said in a broken voice. "Sow no
more troubles! Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I see
blood, blood, blood everywhere! Blood? Ah, God, shall I from this time
see anything else? But there is no turning back. There is no undoing.
So, do you go to Biron. And do you," he went on, sullenly addressing
Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful he should
know."
"'Tis done, sire!" the Marshal cried, with a hiccough. "Come, brother!"
But when the two, the courtiers making quick way for them, had passed
down the hall to the door, the Marshal tapped Hannibal's sleeve.
"It was touch and go," he muttered; it was plain he had been more sober
than he seemed. "Mind you, it does not do to thwart our little master in
his fits! Remember that another time, or worse will come of it, brother.
As it is, you came out of it finely and tripped that black devil's heels
to a marvel! But you won't be so mad as to go to Biron?"
"Yes," Count Hannibal answered coldly. "I shall go."
"Better not! Better not!" the Marshal answered. "'Twill be easier to go
in than to come out--with a whole throat! Have you taken wild cats in
the hollow of a tree? The young first, and then the she-cat? Well, it
will be that! Take my advice, brother. Have after Montgomery, if you
please, ride with Nancay to Chatillon--he is mounting now--go where you
please out of Paris, but don't go there! Biron hates us, hates me. And
for the King, if he do not see you for a few days, 'twill blow over in a
week."
Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "I shall go."
The Marshal stared a moment. "Morbleu!" he said, "why? 'Tis not to
please the King, I know. What do you think to find there, brother?"
"A minister," Hannibal answered gently. "I want one with life in him,
and they are scarce in the open. So I must to covert after him." And,
twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he passed across
the court to the gate, and to his horses.
The Marshal went back laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the
hall, jostled by accident a gentleman who was passing out.
"What is it?" the Gascon cried hotly; for it was Chicot he had jostled.
"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal hiccoughed. And,
smiting his thigh anew, he went off into another fit of laughter.