Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and
arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,
from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests
rose without ceasing. The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped
the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and
heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they
seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed
gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,
brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the
terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and
some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and
bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most
striking thing was the thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for
fresh excitement. In the space of time it took him to pass through them,
Count Hannibal heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city;
that Montgomery and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had
escaped on horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the
pursuit; that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the
fugitives; that he had never left the city; that he was even then
entering by the Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the
Arsenal, that he had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead,
that with the Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre,
that-And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of earshot
of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the quadrangle, the
new facade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance; which rose in smiling
contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that now, the central tower
removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But what was this which lay
along the foot of the new Italian wall? This, round which some stood,
gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh sand about it, or after long
downward-looking glanced up to answer the question of a person at a
window?
Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of
buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much
spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical
laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed the
court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for she
turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung back,
giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and meeting
Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her petticoats, and
a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was out again.