But Tignonville would not.
"Very well," Count Hannibal answered; and he went on with his supper. "I
am indifferent whether you eat or not. It is enough for me that you are
one of the two things I lacked an hour ago; and that I have you, M. de
Tignonville. And through you I look to obtain the other."
"What other?" Tignonville cried.
"A minister," Tavannes answered, smiling. "A minister. There are not
many left in Paris--of your faith. But you met one this morning, I
know."
"I? I met one?"
"Yes, Monsieur, you! And can lay your hand on him in five minutes, you
know."
M. de Tignonville gasped. His face turned a shade paler.
"You have a spy," he cried. "You have a spy upstairs!"
Tavannes raised his cup to his lips, and drank. When he had set it down-"It may be," he said, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I know, it boots
not how I know. It is my business to make the most of my knowledge--and
of yours!"
M. de Tignonville laughed rudely. "Make the most of your own," he said;
"you will have none of mine."
"That remains to be seen," Count Hannibal answered. "Carry your mind
back two days, M. de Tignonville. Had I gone to Mademoiselle de Vrillac
last Saturday and said to her 'Marry me, or promise to marry me,' what
answer would she have given?"
"She would have called you an insolent!" the young man replied hotly.
"And I--"
"No matter what you would have done!" Tavannes said. "Suffice it that
she would have answered as you suggest. Yet to-day she has given me her
promise."
"Yes," the young man retorted, "in circumstances in which no man of
honour--"
"Let us say in peculiar circumstances."
"Well?"
"Which still exist! Mark me, M. de Tignonville," Count Hannibal
continued, leaning forward and eyeing the young man with meaning, "which
still exist! And may have the same effect on another's will as on hers!
Listen! Do you hear?" And rising from his seat with a darkening face,
he pointed to the partly shuttered window, through which the measured
tramp of a body of men came heavily to the ear. "Do you hear, Monsieur?
Do you understand? As it was yesterday it is to-day! They killed the
President La Place this morning! And they are searching! They are still
searching! The river is not yet full, nor the gibbet glutted! I have
but to open that window and denounce you, and your life would hang by no
stronger thread than the life of a mad dog which they chase through the
streets!"
The younger man had risen also. He stood confronting Tavannes, the cowl
fallen back from his face, his eyes dilated.
"You think to frighten me!" he cried. "You think that I am craven enough
to sacrifice her to save myself. You--"