"I tried to speak to you this morning."
"Was it you, then, whom Madame St. Lo saw stalking me before dinner?
"It was."
She clasped her hands and heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God,
Monsieur!" she replied. "You have lifted a weight from me. I fear
nothing in comparison of that. Nothing!"
"Alas!" he answered sombrely, "there is much to fear, for others if not
for ourselves! Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears
always in his belt? What it is he carries with such care? What it was
he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?"
"Letters from the King."
"Yes, but the import of those letters?"
"No."
"And yet, should they be written in letters of blood!" the minister
exclaimed, his face kindling. "They should scorch the hands that hold
them and blister the eyes that read them. They are the fire and the
sword! They are the King's order to do at Angers as they have done in
Paris. To slay all of the religion who are found there--and they are
many! To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the unborn
child! See yonder hawk!" he continued, pointing with a shaking hand to a
falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the movement of
its wings invisible. "How it disports itself in the face of the sun! How
easy its way, how smooth its flight! But see, it drops upon its prey in
the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its beauty is slaughter! So
is it with yonder company!" His finger sank until it indicated the
little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow four hundred feet below
them, with every man and horse, and the very camp-kettle, clear-cut and
visible, though diminished by distance to fairy-like proportions. "So it
is with yonder company!" he repeated sternly. "They play and are merry,
and one fishes and another sleeps! But at the end of the journey is
death. Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!"
She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot behind
her, and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders, and the
little camp. The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the stillness
of an August afternoon. But his words went home so truly that the sunlit
landscape before the eyes added one more horror to the picture he called
up before the mind.
The Countess turned white and sick. "Are you sure?" she whispered at
last.
"Quite sure."
"Ah, God!" she cried, "are we never to have peace?" And turning from the
valley, she walked some distance into the grass court, and stood. After
a time, she turned to him; he had followed her doggedly, pace for pace.
"What do you want me to do?" she cried, despair in her voice. "What can
I do?"