M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of
things he would have lain where he was, and groaned. But when a man has
once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at his shoulder. He
has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to set as great a
distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself. So it was with
the Huguenot. Shot suddenly into the full publicity of the street, he
knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape; and he was on
his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter of his fall had
travelled the length of three houses.
The rabble were still a hundred paces away, piled up and pressed about a
house where men were being hunted as men hunt rats. He saw that he was
unnoted, and apprehension gave place to rage. His thoughts turned back
hissing hot to the thing that had happened, and in a paroxysm of shame he
shook his fist at the gaping casement and the sneering face of his rival,
dimly seen in the background. If a look would have killed Tavannes--and
her--it had not been wanting.
For it was not only the man M. de Tignonville hated at this moment; he
hated Mademoiselle also, the unwitting agent of the other's triumph. She
had thrust him from her; she had refused to be guided by him; she had
resisted, thwarted, shamed him. Then let her take the consequences. She
willed to perish: let her perish!
He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, the
proof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of that courage
to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himself provoked the
trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's fire burns up the
dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discovery that in an heroic hour
he was no hero that gave force to his passionate gesture, and next moment
sent him storming down the beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his
heart a maelstrom of fierce vows and fiercer menaces.
He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go. His
lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of his faith
whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond the
religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yet the
streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge of peril; he
lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And, whether he
walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers bold enough to
take his life.