When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled. How narrowly had he
been saved from misjudging her! Had he not lain and waited, had he not
possessed himself in patience, he might have thought her in collusion
with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with those who came to
slay him. Either he might have perished unwarned; or escaping that
danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville and lost for all time
the ideal of a noble woman.
He had escaped that peril. More, he had gained the weapons we have
indicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almost intoxicated
him. Surely if he wielded those weapons to the best advantage, if he
strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel of her heart must yield
at last!
He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to do things
after a flamboyant fashion. He knew that her act would plunge him in
perils which she had not foreseen. If the preachers roused the Papists
of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for the massacre
and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he did not give that
signal there would be trouble. There would be trouble of the kind in
which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, trouble about the
ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevin castle;
trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.
Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal his knowledge.
Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he would forgive. With the
flood of peril which she had unloosed rising round them, he would say,
"Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; he would say to her, "I know,
and I forgive!" That, that only, would fitly crown the policy on which
he had decided from the first, though he had not hoped to conduct it on
lines so splendid as those which now dazzled him.