Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest whom his brother had ridden down that morning. Father Pezelay's pale hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one temple and part of his face. But, below the bandage, the flame of his eyes was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue. To the King he had come-for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance was come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to grow longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like. He stood there a fitting representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles and his successor-the last of a doomed line-alternately used as tool or feared as master; and to which the most debased and the most immoral of courts paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage. Even in the midst of the drunken, shameless courtiers-who stood, if they stood for anything, for that other influence of the day, the Renaissance-he was to be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it. He knew that in the eyes not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten who listened to him, a priest was more sacred than a virgin, and a tonsure than all the virtues of spotless innocence.

"Shall the King give with one hand and withdraw with the other?" the priest began, in a voice hoarse yet strident, a voice borne high above the crowd on the wings of passion. "Shall he spare of the best of the men and the maidens whom God hath doomed, whom the Church hath devoted, whom the King hath given? Is the King's hand shortened or his word annulled that a man does as he forbiddeth and leaves undone what he commandeth? Is God mocked? Woe, woe unto you," he continued, turning swiftly, arms uplifted, towards Tavannes, "who please yourself with the red and white of their maidens and take of the best of the spoil, sparing where the King's word is 'Spare not!' Who strike at Holy Church with the sword! Who-"

"Answer, sirrah!" Charles cried, spurning the floor in his fury. He could not listen long to any man. "Is it so? Is it so? Do you do these things?"

Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer, when a thick, drunken voice rose from the crowd behind him. "Is it what? Eh! Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the obsequious circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay, his hand on his sword. "Were you a priest ten times-

"Silence!" Charles cried, almost foaming with rage at this fresh interruption. "It's not he, fool! 'Tis your pestilent brother."

"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal answered with a menacing gesture. He was sober enough, it appeared, to hear what was said, but not to comprehend its drift; and this caused a titter, which immediately excited his rage. He turned and seized the nearest laugher by the ear. "Insolent!" he cried. "I will teach you to laugh when the King speaks! Puppy! Who laughs at his Majesty or touches my brother has to do with Tavannes!"

The King, in a rage that almost deprived him of speech, stamped the floor twice. "Idiot!" he cried. "Imbecile! Let the man go! 'Tis not he! 'Tis your heretic brother, I tell you! By all the Saints! By the body of-" and he poured forth a flood of oaths. "Will you listen to me and be silent! Will you-your brother-"

"If he be not your Majesty's servant, I will kill him with this sword!" the irrepressible Marshal struck in. "As I have killed ten to-day! Ten!" And, staggering back, he only saved himself from falling by clutching Chicot about the neck.

"Steady, my pretty Maréchale!" the jester cried, chucking him under the chin with one hand, while with some difficulty he supported him with the other-for he, too, was far from sober-

"Pretty Margot, toy with me, Maiden bashful-"

"Silence!" Charles cried, darting forth his long arms in a fury of impatience. "God, have I killed every man of sense? Are you all gone mad? Silence! Do you hear? Silence! And let me hear what he has to say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal. "And look you, sirrah," he continued with a curse, "see that it be to the purpose!"

"If it be a question of your Majesty's service," Tavannes answered. "And obedience to your Majesty's orders, I am deeper in it than he who stands there!" with a sign towards the priest. "I give my word for that. And I will prove it."

"How, sir?" Charles cried. "How, how, how? How will you prove it?"

"By doing for you, sire, what he will not do!" Tavannes answered scornfully. "Let him stand out, and if he will serve his Church as I will serve my King-

"Blaspheme not!" cried the priest.

"Chatter not!" Tavannes retorted hardily, "but do! Better is he," he continued, "who takes a city than he who slays women! Nay, sire," he went on hurriedly, seeing the King start, "be not angry, but hear me! You would send to Biron, to the Arsenal? You seek a messenger, sire? Then let the good father be the man. Let him take your Majesty's will to Biron, and let him see the Grand Master face to face, and bring him to reason. Or, if he will not, I will! Let that be the test!"

"Ay, ay!" cried Marshal de Tavannes, "you say well, brother! Let him!"

"And if he will not, I will!" Tavannes repeated. "Let that be the test, sire."

The King wheeled suddenly to Father Pezelay.

"You hear, father?" he said. "What say you!"

The priest's face grew sallow, and more sallow. He knew that the walls of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of Biron's would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children, their wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught but to stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb from limb before they died! The challenge, therefore, was one-sided and unfair; but for that very reason it shook him. The astuteness of the man who, taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him with dread. He dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the offer. And meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their beards, were on him. At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which had lost its boldness and assurance.

"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word, and set at naught his Christian orders. For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.' For you go but to your own, and your own will receive you!"

"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!"

Charles turned. "Silence, railer!" he said in a broken voice. "Sow no more troubles! Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I see blood, blood, blood everywhere! Blood! Ah, God, shall I from this time see anything else? But there is no turning back. There is no undoing. So, do you go to Biron. And do you," he went on, sullenly addressing Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful he should know."

"'Tis done, sire!" the Marshal cried with a hiccough. "Come, brother!"

But when the two, the courtiers making quick way for them, had passed down the hall to the door, the Marshal tapped Hannibal's sleeve. "It was touch and go," he muttered; it was plain he had been more sober than he seemed. "Mind you, it does not do to thwart our little master in his fits! Remember that another time, or worse will come of it, brother. As it is, you came out of it finely and tripped that black devil's heels to a marvel! But you won't be so mad as to go to Biron?"

"Yes," Count Hannibal answered coldly. "I shall go."

"Better not! Better not!" the Marshal answered. "'Twill be easier to go in than to come out-with a whole throat! Have you taken wild cats in the hollow of a tree? The young first, and then the she-cat? Well, it will be that! Take my advice, brother. Have after Montgomery, if you please, ride with Nançay to Chatillon-he is mounting now-go where you please out of Paris, but don't go there! Biron hates us, hates me. And for the King, if he do not see you for a few days, 'twill blow over in a week."

Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "I shall go."

The Marshal stared a moment. "Morbleu!" he said, "why? 'Tis not to please the King, I know. What do you think to find there, brother?"

"A minister," Hannibal answered gently. "I want one with life in him, and they are scarce in the open. So I must to covert after him." And, twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he passed across the court to the gate, and to his horses. The Marshal went back laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the hall, jostled by accident a gentleman who was passing out.

"What is it?" the Gascon cried hotly; for it was Chicot he had jostled.

"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal hiccoughed. And, smiting his thigh anew, he went off into another fit of laughter.

CHAPTER XIII
DIPLOMACY

Where the old wall of Paris, of which no vestige remains, ran down on the east to the north bank of the river, the space in the angle between the Seine and the ramparts beyond the Rue St. Pol wore at this date an aspect typical of the troubles of the time. Along the waterside the gloomy old Palace of St. Pol, once the residence of the mad King Charles the Sixth-and his wife, the abandoned Isabeau de Bavière-sprawled its maze of mouldering courts and ruined galleries, a dreary monument of the Gothic days which were passing from France. Its spacious curtilage and dark pleasaunces covered all the ground between the river and the Rue St. Antoine; and north of this, under the shadow of the eight great towers of the Bastille, which looked, four outward to check the stranger, four inward to bridle the town, a second palace, beginning where St. Pol ended, carried the realm of decay to the city wall.

This second palace was the Hôtel des Tournelles, a fantastic medley of turrets, spires, and gables, that equally with its neighbour recalled the days of the English domination; it had been the abode of the Regent Bedford. From his time it had remained for a hundred years the town residence of the kings of France; but the death of Henry II., slain in its lists by the lance of the same Montgomery who was this day fleeing for his life before Guise, had given his widow a distaste for it. Catherine de Médicis, her sons, and the Court had abandoned it; already its gardens lay a tangled wilderness, its roofs let in the rain, rats played where kings had slept; and in "our palace of the Tournelles" reigned only silence and decay. Unless, indeed, as was whispered abroad, the grim shade of the eleventh Louis sometimes walked in its desolate precincts.

In the innermost angle between the ramparts and the river, shut off from the rest of Paris by the decaying courts and enceintes of these forsaken palaces, stood the Arsenal. Destroyed in great part by the explosion of a powder-mill a few years earlier, it was in the main new; and by reason of its river frontage, which terminated at the ruined tower of Billy, and its proximity to the Bastille, it was esteemed one of the keys of Paris. It was the appanage of the Master of the Ordnance, and within its walls M. de Biron, a Huguenot in politics, if not in creed, who held the office at this time, had secured himself on the first alarm. During the day he had admitted a number of refugees, whose courage or good luck had led them to his gate; and as night fell-on such a carnage as the hapless city had not beheld since the great slaughter of the Armagnacs, one hundred and fifty-four years earlier-the glow of his matches through the dusk, and the sullen tramp of his watchmen as they paced the walls, indicated that there was still one place in Paris where the King's will did not run.

In comparison of the disorder which prevailed in the city, a deadly quiet reigned here; a stillness so chill that a timid man must have stood and hesitated to approach. But a stranger who about nightfall rode down the street towards the entrance, a single footman running at his stirrup, only nodded a stern approval of the preparations. As he drew nearer he cast an attentive eye this way and that; nor stayed until a hoarse challenge brought him up when he had come within six horses' lengths of the Arsenal gate. He reined up then, and raising his voice, asked in clear tones for M. de Biron.

"Go," he continued boldly, "tell the Grand Master that one from the King is here, and would speak with him."

"From the King of France?" the officer on the gate asked.

"Surely! Is there more than one King in France?"

A curse and a bitter cry of "King? King Herod!" were followed by a muttered discussion that, in the ears of one of the two who waited in the gloom below, boded little good. The two could descry figures moving to and fro before the faint red light of the smouldering matches; and presently a man on the gate kindled a torch, and held it so as to fling its light downward. The stranger's attendant cowered behind the horse. "Have a care, my lord!" he whispered. "They are aiming at us!"

If so the rider's bold front and unmoved demeanour gave them pause. Presently, "I will send for the Grand Master" the man who had spoken before announced. "In whose name, monsieur?"

"No matter," the stranger answered. "Say, one from the King."

"You are alone?"

"I shall enter alone."

The assurance seemed to be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!" and after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the portcullis creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch. The horseman waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid to the ground, threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked across. In an instant he left behind him the dark street, the river, and the sounds of outrage, which the night breeze bore from the farther bank, and found himself within the vaulted gateway, in a bright glare of light, the centre of a ring of gleaming eyes and angry faces.

The light blinded him for a few seconds; but the guards, on their side, were in no better case. For the stranger was masked; and in their ignorance who it was looked at them through the slits in the black velvet they stared, disconcerted, and at a loss. There were some there with naked weapons in their hands who would have struck him through had they known who he was; and more who would have stood aside while the deed was done. But the uncertainty-that and the masked man's tone paralysed them. For they reflected that he might be any one. Condé, indeed, stood too small, but Navarre, if he lived, might fill that cloak; or Guise, or Anjou, or the King himself. And while some would not have scrupled to strike the blood royal, more would have been quick to protect and avenge it. And so before the dark uncertainty of the mask, before the riddle of the smiling eyes which glittered through the slits, they stared irresolute; until a hand, the hand of one bolder than his fellows, was raised to pluck away the screen.

The unknown dealt the fellow a buffet with his fist. "Down, rascal!" he said hoarsely. "And you" – to the officer-"show me instantly to M. de Biron!"

But the lieutenant, who stood in fear of his men, looked at him doubtfully. "Nay," he said, "not so fast!" And one of the others, taking the lead, cried, "No! We may have no need of M. de Biron. Your name, monsieur, first."

With a quick movement the stranger gripped the officer's wrist. "Tell your master," he said, "that he who clasped his wrist thus on the night of Pentecost is here, and would speak with him! And say, mark you, that I will come to him, not he to me!"

The sign and the tone imposed upon the boldest. Two-thirds of the watch were Huguenots, who burned to avenge the blood of their fellows; and these, overriding their officer, had agreed to deal with the intruder, if a Papegot, without recourse to the Grand Master, whose moderation they dreaded. A knife-thrust in the ribs, and another body in the ditch-why not, when such things were done outside? But even these doubted now; and M. Peridol, the lieutenant, reading in the eyes of his men the suspicions which he had himself conceived, was only anxious to obey, if they would let him. So gravely was he impressed, indeed, by the bearing of the unknown that he turned when he had withdrawn, and came back to assure himself that the men meditated no harm in his absence; nor until he had exchanged a whisper with one of them would he leave them and go.

While he was gone on his errand the envoy leaned against the wall of the gateway, and, with his chin sunk on his breast and his mind fallen into reverie, seemed unconscious of the dark glances of which he was the target. He remained in this position until the officer came back, followed by a man with a lantern. Their coming roused the unknown, who, invited to follow Peridol, traversed two courts without remark, and in the same silence entered a building in the extreme eastern corner of the enceinte abutting on the ruined Tour de Billy. Here, in an upper floor, the Governor of the Arsenal had established his temporary lodging.

The chamber into which the stranger was introduced betrayed the haste in which it had been prepared for its occupant. Two silver lamps which hung from the beams of the unceiled roof shed light on a medley of arms and inlaid armour, of parchments, books, and steel caskets, which encumbered not the tables only, but the stools and chests that, after the fashion of that day, stood formally along the arras. In the midst of the disorder, on the bare floor, walked the man who, more than any other, had been instrumental in drawing the Huguenots to Paris-and to their doom. It was not wonderful that the events of the day, the surprise and horror still rode his mind; nor that even he who passed for a model of stiffness and reticence betrayed for once the indignation which filled his breast. Until the officer had withdrawn and closed the door he did, indeed, keep silence; standing beside the table and eyeing his visitor with a lofty port and a stern glance. But the moment he was assured that they were alone he spoke.

"Your Highness may unmask now," he said, making no effort to hide his contempt. "Yet were you well advised to take the precaution, since you had hardly come at me in safety without it. Had those who keep the gate seen you, I would not have answered for your Highness's life! The more shame," he continued vehemently, "on the deeds of this day which have compelled the brother of a King of France to hide his face in his own capital and in his own fortress. For I dare to say, Monsieur, what no other will say, now the Admiral is dead. You have brought back the days of the Armagnacs. You have brought bloody days and an evil name on France, and I pray God that you may not pay in your turn what you have exacted. But if you continue to be advised by M. de Guise, this I will say, Monsieur" – and his voice fell low and stern. "Burgundy slew Orleans, indeed; but he came in his turn to the Bridge of Montereau."

"You take me for Monsieur?" the unknown asked. And it was plain that he smiled under his mask.

Biron's face altered. "I take you," he answered sharply, "for him whose sign you sent me."

"The wisest are sometimes astray," the other answered with a low laugh. And he took off his mask.

The Grand Master started back, his eyes sparkling with anger. "M. de Tavannes?" he cried, and for a moment he was silent in sheer astonishment. Then, striking his hand on the table, "What means this trickery!" he asked.

"It is of the simplest," Tavannes answered coolly. "And yet, as you just now said, I had hardly come at you without it. And I had to come at you. No, M. de Biron," he added quickly, as Biron in a rage laid his hand on a bell which stood beside him on the table, "you cannot that way undo what is done."

"I can at least deliver you," the Grand Master answered, in heat, "to those who will deal with you as you have dealt with us and ours."

"It will avail you nothing," Count Hannibal replied soberly. "For see here, Grand Master, I come from the King. If you are at war with him, and hold his fortress in his teeth, I am his ambassador and sacrosanct. If you are at peace with him and hold it at his will, I am his servant, and safe also."

"At peace and safe?" Biron cried, his voice trembling with indignation. "And are those safe or at peace who came here trusting to his word, who lay in his palace and slept in his beds? Where are they, and how have they fared, that you dare appeal to the law of nations, or he to the loyalty of Biron? And for you to beard me, whose brother to-day hounded the dogs of this vile city on the noblest in France, who have leagued yourself with a crew of foreigners to do a deed which will make our country stink in the nostrils of the world when we are dust! You, to come here and talk of peace and safety! M. de Tavannes" – and he struck his hand on the table-"you are a bold man. I know why the King had a will to send you, but I know not why you had the will to come."

"That I will tell you later," Count Hannibal answered coolly. "For the King, first. My message is brief, M. de Biron. Have you a mind to hold the scales in France?"

"Between?" Biron asked contemptuously.

"Between the Lorrainers and the Huguenots."

The Grand Master scowled fiercely. "I have played the go-between once too often," he growled.

"It is no question of going between, it is a question of holding between," Tavannes answered coolly. "It is a question-but, in a word, have you a mind, M. de Biron, to be Governor of Rochelle? The King, having dealt the blow that has been struck to-day, looks to follow up severity, as a wise ruler should, with indulgence. And to quiet the minds of the Rochellois he would set over them a ruler at once acceptable to them-or war must come of it-and faithful to his Majesty. Such a man, M. de Biron, will in such a post be Master of the Kingdom; for he will hold the doors of Janus, and as he bridles his sea-dogs, or unchains them, there will be peace or war in France."

"Is all that from the King's mouth?" Biron asked with sarcasm. But his passion had died down. He was grown thoughtful, suspicious; he eyed the other intently as if he would read his heart.

"The offer is his, and the reflections are mine," Tavannes answered drily. "Let me add one more. The Admiral is dead. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé are prisoners. Who is now to balance the Italians and the Guises? The Grand Master-if he be wise and content to give the law to France from the citadel of Rochelle."

Biron stared at the speaker in astonishment at his frankness. "You are a bold man," he cried at last. "But timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," he continued bitterly. "You offer, sir, too much."

"The offer is the King's."

"And the conditions? The price?"

"That you remain quiet, M. de Biron."

"In the Arsenal?"

"In the Arsenal. And do not too openly counteract the King's will. That is all."

The Grand Master looked puzzled. "I will give up no one," he said. "No one! Let that be understood."

"The King requires no one."

A pause. Then, "Does M. de Guise know of the offer?" Biron inquired; and his eye grew bright. He hated the Guises and was hated by them. It was there he was a Huguenot.

"He has gone far to-day," Count Hannibal answered drily. "And if no worse come of it should be content. Madame Catherine knows of it."

The Grand Master was aware that Marshal Tavannes depended on the Queen-mother; and he shrugged his shoulders. "Ay, 'tis like her policy," he muttered. "'Tis like her!" And pointing his guest to a cushioned chest which stood against the wall, he sat down in a chair beside the table and thought awhile, his brow wrinkled, his eyes dreaming. By-and-by he laughed sourly. "You have lighted the fire," he said, "and would fain I put it out."

"We would have you hinder it spreading."

"You have done the deed and are loth to pay the blood-money. That is it, is it?"

"We prefer to pay it to M. de Biron," Count Hannibal answered civilly.

Again the Grand Master was silent awhile. At length he looked up and fixed Tavannes with eyes keen as steel. "What is behind?" he growled. "Say, man, what is it? What is behind?"

"If there be aught behind, I do not know it," Tavannes answered steadfastly.

M. de Biron relaxed the fixity of his gaze. "But you said that you had an object?" he returned.

"I had-in being the bearer of the message."

"What was it?"

"My object? To learn two things."

"The first, if it please you?" The Grand Master's chin stuck out a little, as he spoke.

"Have you in the Arsenal a M. de Tignonville, a gentleman of Poitou?"

"I have not," Biron answered curtly. "The second?"

"Have you here a Huguenot minister?"

"I have not. And if I had I should not give him up," he added firmly.

Tavannes shrugged his shoulders. "I have a use for one," he said carelessly. "But it need not harm him."

"For what, then, do you need him?"

"To marry me."

The other stared. "But you are a Catholic," he said.

"But she is a Huguenot," Tavannes answered.

The Grand Master did not attempt to hide his astonishment. "And she sticks on that?" he exclaimed. "To-day?"

"She sticks on that. To-day."

"To-day? Nom de Dieu! To-day! Well," brushing the matter aside after a pause of bewilderment, "any way, I cannot help her. I have no minister here. If there be aught else I can do for her-"

"Nothing, I thank you," Tavannes answered. "Then it only remains for me to take your answer to the King?" And he rose politely, and taking his mask from the table prepared to assume it.

M. de Biron gazed at him a moment without speaking, as if he pondered on the answer he should give. At length he nodded, and rang the bell which stood beside him.

"The mask!" he muttered in a low voice as footsteps sounded without. And, obedient to the hint, Tavannes disguised himself. A second later the officer who had introduced him opened the door and entered.

"Peridol," M. de Biron said-he had risen to his feet-"I have received a message which needs confirmation; and to obtain this I must leave the Arsenal. I am going to the house-you will remember this-of Marshal Tavannes, who will be responsible for my person; in the meantime this gentleman will remain under strict guard in the south chamber upstairs. You will treat him as a hostage, with all respect, and will allow him to preserve his incognito. But if I do not return by noon to-morrow, you will deliver him to the men below, who will know how to deal with him."

Count Hannibal made no attempt to interrupt him, nor did he betray the discomfiture which he undoubtedly felt. But as the Grand Master paused, "M. de Biron," he said, in a voice harsh and low, "you will answer to me for this!" And his eyes glittered through the slits in the mask.

"Possibly, but not to-day or to-morrow!" Biron replied, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously. "Peridol! see the gentleman bestowed as I have ordered, and then return to me. Monsieur," with a bow, half courteous, half ironical, "let me commend to you the advantages of silence and your mask." And he waved his hand in the direction of the door.