"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.
"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with passion. "His Majesty
knows whether I serve him."
"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve
me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood
of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in
mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow! Ay, you will!
you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with
a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as you! Foucauld was
better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my God!"
And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so
often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst
into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with
the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer
of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the
cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the
shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for
their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes,
trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.
One looked at another in consternation. Fear grew in eyes that a moment
before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic. If
he changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed
on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe? Whose turn might it not
be to-morrow? Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done
this day? Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before,
shuddered and glanced behind them. It was as if the dead who lay stark
without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose
shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall;
and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold
breath in the living ears, "A reckoning! A reckoning! As I am, thou
shalt be!"
It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with his
hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward.
"Nay, sire," he cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and
seemed to challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed,
yet will not I! What we have done we have done! So be it! The dead are
dead! So be it! For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who
will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition! I have
said I will go, and I go, sire. And you, churchman," he continued,
turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to church! To
church, shaveling! Go, watch and pray for us! Fast and flog for us!
Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down! For it is all,
it seems, you will do for your King!"