But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence brutal
and unquestioning they continued to howl, "Open! Open!" while the man
who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the
hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it.
Then, laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot
against the wall below. Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed
to dilate with the fury and violence of his character.
"Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my riders and scatter you? Must I
flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes;
beware of me! I have claws and teeth and I bite!" he continued, the
scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he
flung them. "Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where
I am! Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man! I will
flay your backs. Go! Go! I am Tavannes!"
But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his
arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was
exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a
dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As many more
tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window,
and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan, the
cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led
the way.
Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them,
his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple,
raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his adversary's
inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars, Tavannes raised a
pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked it at leisure, and
levelled it at the foul face which leered close to his. The dwarf saw
the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too late. A flash, a scream,
and the wretch, shot through the throat, flung up his hands, and fell
back into the arms of a lean man in black who had lent him his shoulder
to ascend.
For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the room.
There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the Huguenots were
resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to guard the back and
some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. But when the fumes cleared
away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as it had been. Count
Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim smile on his lips.