look surprised, noble sir,” the lean man, who had joined them, answered in a soothing tone. “Who kills to-night does God service, and who serves God much may serve himself a little. ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,’ says good Father Pezelay.”
“Hear, hear!” the cripple chimed in eagerly, his impatience such that he danced on his toes. “He preaches as well as the good father his master! So frankly, noble sir, what is it? What is it? A woman grown ugly? A rich man grown old, with perchance a will in his chest? Or a young heir that stands in my lord’s way? Whichever it be, or whatever it be, trust me and our friend here, and my butcher’s gully shall cut the knot.”
Tignonville shook his head.
“But something there is,” the lean man persisted obstinately; and he cast a suspicious glance at Tignonville’s clothes. It was evident that the two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there. “Have the dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers’ shops on the bridge to fill your purse again? If so, take my word, it were better to go three than one, and we’ll enlist.”
“Ay, we know shops on the bridge where you can plunge your arm elbow-deep in gold,” the cripple muttered, his eyes sparkling greedily. “There’s Baillet’s, noble sir! There’s a shop for you! And there’s the man’s shop who works for the King. He’s lame like me. And I know the way to all. Oh, it will be a merry night if they ring before the dawn. It must be near daybreak now. And what’s that?”
Ay, what was it? A score of voices called for silence; a breathless hush fell on the crowd. A moment the fiercest listened, with parted lips and starting eyes. Then, “It was the bell!” cried one, “let us out!” “It was not!” cried another. “It was a pistol shot!” “Anyhow let us out!” the crowd roared in chorus; “let us out!” And they pressed in a furious mass towards the door, as if they would force it, signal or no signal.
But the pikemen stood fast, and the throng, checked in their first rush, turned on one another, and broke into wrangling and disputing; boasting, and calling Heaven and the saints to witness how thoroughly, how pitilessly, how remorselessly they would purge Paris of this leprosy when the signal did sound. Until again above the babel a man cried “Silence!” and again they listened. And this time, dulled by walls and distance, but unmistakable by the ears of fear or hate, the heavy note of a bell came to them on the hot night air. It was the boom, sullen and menacing, of the death signal.
The doorkeepers lowered their pikes, and with a wild rush, as of wolves swarming on their prey, the band stormed the door, and thrust and struggled and battled a way down the narrow staircase, and along the narrow passage. “A bas les Huguenots! Mort aux Huguenots!” they shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands, viler faces, they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour to the boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned the streets of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty. For as it was here, so it was in a dozen other quarters.
Quickly as they streamed out—and to have issued more quickly would have been impossible—fiercely as they pushed and fought and clove their way, Tignonville was of the foremost. And for a moment, seeing the street clear before him and almost empty, the Huguenot thought that he might do something. He might outstrip the stream of rapine, he might carry the alarm; at worst he might reach his betrothed before harm befell her. But when he had sped fifty yards, his heart sank. True, none passed him; but under the spell of the alarm-bell the stones themselves seemed to turn to men. Houses, courts, alleys, the very churches vomited men. In a twinkling the street was alive with men, roared with them as with a rushing tide, gleamed with their lights and weapons, thundered with the volume of their thousand voices. He was no longer ahead, men were running before him, behind him, on his right hand and on his left. In every side-street, every passage, men were running; and not men only, but women, children, furious creatures without age or sex. And all the time the bell tolled overhead, tolled faster and faster, and louder and louder; and shots and screams, and the clash of arms, and the fall of strong doors began to swell the maelstrom of sound.
He was in the Rue St. Honoré now, and speeding westward. But the flood still rose with him, and roared abreast of him. Nay, it outstripped him. When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a hundred paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of people moving slowly to meet him. In the heart of the press the light of a dozen torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed; whose eyes, as they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the rabble about them, never left the gabled roofs on their right. On these from time to time a white-clad figure showed itself, and passed from chimney-stack to chimney-stack, or, stooping low, ran along the parapet. Every time that this happened, the men on horseback pointed upwards and the mob foamed with rage.
Tignonville groaned, but he could not help. Unable to go forward, he turned, and with others hurrying, shouting, and brandishing weapons, he pressed into the Rue du Roule, passed through it, and gained the Bethizy. But here, as he might have foreseen, all passage was barred at the Hôtel Ponthieu by a horde of savages, who danced and yelled and sang songs round the Admiral’s body, which lay in the middle of the way; while to right and left men were bursting into houses and forcing new victims into the street. The worst had happened there, and he turned panting, regained the Rue St. Honoré, and, crossing it and turning left-handed, darted through side streets until he came again into the main thoroughfare a little beyond the Croix du Tiroir, that marked the corner of Mademoiselle’s house.
Here his last hope left him. The street swarmed with bands of men hurrying to and fro as in a sacked city. The scum of the Halles, the rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets reflected the glare of a hundred torches. At one time and within sight, three or four houses were being stormed. On every side rose heart-rending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests, with cries of “To the river!” The most cruel of cities had burst its bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine ran red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets, men, for fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges with poles and boat-hooks.
All this Tignonville saw, though his eyes, leaping the turmoil, looked only to the door at which he had left Mademoiselle a few hours earlier. There a crowd of men pressed and struggled; but from the spot where he stood he could see no more. That was enough, however. Rage nerved him, and despair; his world was dying round him. If he could not save her he would avenge her. Recklessly he plunged into the tumult; blade in hand, with vigorous blows he thrust his way through, his white sleeve and the white cross in his hat gaining him passage until he reached the fringe of the band who beset the door. Here his first attempt to pass failed; and he might have remained hampered by the crowd, if a squad of archers had not ridden up. As they spurred to the spot, heedless over whom they rode, he clutched a stirrup, and was borne with them into the heart of the crowd. In a twinkling he stood on the threshold of the house, face to face and foot to foot with Count Hannibal, who stood also on the threshold, but with his back to the door, which, unbarred and unbolted, gaped open behind him.
CHAPTER V. ROUGH WOOING.
The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on the instant, the Marshal’s brother had said his last word in the world.
Yet as he stood there, a head above the crowd, he seemed unconscious alike of Tignonville and the point that all but pricked his breast. Swart and grim-visaged, his harsh features distorted by the glare which shone upon him, he looked
