Tignonville trembled lest he should be singled out. He had hidden
himself as well as he could at the rear of the crowd by the door; but his
dress, so much above the common, rendered him conspicuous. He fancied
that the Provost's eye ranged the crowd for him; and to avoid it and
efface himself he moved a pace to his left.
The step was fatal. It saved him from the Provost, but it brought him
face to face and eye to eye with Count Hannibal, who stood in the first
rank at his brother's elbow. Tavannes stared an instant as if he doubted
his eyesight. Then, as doubt gave slow place to certainty, and surprise
to amazement, he smiled. And after a moment he looked another way.
Tignonville's heart gave a great bump and seemed to stand still. The
lights whirled before his eyes, there was a roaring in his ears. He
waited for the word that should denounce him. It did not come. And
still it did not come; and Marshal Tavannes was turning. Yes, turning,
and going; the Provost, bowing low, was attending him to the door; his
suite were opening on either side to let him pass. And Count Hannibal?
Count Hannibal was following also, as if nothing had occurred. As if he
had seen nothing!
The young man caught his breath. Was it possible that he had imagined
the start of recognition, the steady scrutiny, the sinister smile? No;
for as Tavannes followed the others, he hung an instant on his heel,
their eyes met again, and once more he smiled. In the next breath he was
gone through the doorway, his spurs rang on the stairs; and the babel of
the crowd, checked by the great man's presence, broke out anew, and
louder.
Tignonville shuddered. He was saved as by a miracle; saved, he did not
know how. But the respite, though its strangeness diverted his thoughts
for a while, brought short relief. The horrors which impended over
others surged afresh into his mind, and filled him with a maddening sense
of impotence. To be one hour, only one short half-hour without! To run
through the sleeping streets, and scream in the dull ears which a King's
flatteries had stopped as with wool! To go up and down and shake into
life the guests whose royal lodgings daybreak would turn to a shambles
reeking with their blood! They slept, the gentle Teligny, the brave
Pardaillan, the gallant Rochefoucauld, Piles the hero of St. Jean, while
the cruel city stirred rustling about them, and doom crept whispering to
the door. They slept, they and a thousand others, gentle and simple,
young and old; while the half-mad Valois shifted between two opinions,
and the Italian woman, accursed daughter of an accursed race, cried,
"Hark!" at her window, and looked eastwards for the dawn.