Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/211

Rh a weight from me. I fear nothing in comparison of that. Nothing!”

“Alas!” he answered sombrely, “there is much to fear, for others if not for ourselves! Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears always in his belt? What it is he carries with such care? What it was he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?”

“Letters from the King.”

“Yes, but the import of those letters?”

“No.”

“And yet, should they be written in letters of blood!” the minister exclaimed, his face kindling. “They should scorch the hands that hold them and blister the eyes that read them. They are the fire and the sword! They are the King’s order to do at Angers as they have done in Paris. To slay all of the religion who are found there—and they are many! To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the unborn child! See yonder hawk!” he continued, pointing with a shaking hand to a falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the movement of its wings invisible. “How it disports itself in the face of the sun! How easy its way, how smooth its flight! But see, it drops upon its prey in the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its beauty is slaughter! So is it with yonder company!” His finger sank until it indicated the little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow four hundred feet below them, with every man and horse, and the very camp-kettle, clear-cut and visible, though diminished by distance to fairy-like proportions. “So it is with yonder company!” he repeated sternly. “They play and are merry, and one fishes and another sleeps! But at the end of the journey is death. Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!”

She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot behind her, and at her feet the stream, the