"You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly.
"And now mark me! Preach as you please here. But a word in Angers, and
though you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after a fashion
which will not please you! If you value your tongue therefore,
father--Oh, you shake off the dust, do you? Well, pass on! 'Tis wise,
perhaps."
And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiously lifted
to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on under its swaying
banner, now one and now another of the acolytes looking back and raising
his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on the blasphemer. As the
cortege passed the huge watering-troughs, and the open gateway of the
inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell on their knees. In
answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, and began to sing the
Eripe me, Domine! and to its strains, now vengeful, now despairing, now
rising on a wave of menace, they passed slowly into the distance, slowly
towards Angers and the Loire.
Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve. "Enough for me!" she cried
passionately. "I go no farther with you!"
"Ah?"
"No farther!" she repeated. She was pale, she shivered. "Many thanks,
my cousin, but we part company here. I do not go to Angers. I have seen
horrors enough. I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours and
the east road. For you, I foresee what will happen. You will perish
between the hammer and the anvil."
"Ah?"
"You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering. "Give
over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her. And wash
your hands of her and hers. Or you will see her fall, and fall beside
her! Give her to him, I say--give her to him!"
"My wife?"
"Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the
emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now. "Is there a tie," and
she pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose?
That they will not unloose? Is there a life which escapes if they doom
it? Did the Admiral escape? Or Rochefoucauld? Or Madame de Luns in old
days? I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see
beforehand what will happen. She will perish, and you with her. Wife? A
pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."
"And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.
But she did not heed. "I warned you of that!" she cried. "And you would
not believe me. I told you he was following. And I warn you of this.
You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte! If Tignonville
does not murder you in your bed--"