Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/99

Rh so near him preached its solemn sermon. But death and pleasure are never far apart; and at no time and nowhere have they jostled one another more familiarly than in that age, wherever the influence of Italy and Italian art and Italian hopelessness extended. Again, on the one side, La Tribe’s example went for something with his comrade in misfortune; but in the other scale hung relief from discomfort, with the prospect of a woman’s smiles and a woman’s flatteries, of dainty dishes, luxury, and passion. If he went now, he went to her from the jaws of death, with the glamour of adventure and peril about him; and the very going into her presence was a lure. Moreover, if he had been willing while his betrothed was still his, why not now when he had lost her?

It was this last reflection—and one other thing which came on a sudden into his mind—which turned the scale. About noon he sat up in the hay, and, abruptly and sullenly, “I’ll lie here no longer,” he said; and he dropped his legs over the side. “I shall go.”

The movement was so unexpected that La Tribe stared at him in silence. Then, “You will run a great risk, M. de Tignonville,” he said gravely, “if you do. You may go as far under cover of night as the river, or you may reach one of the gates. But as to crossing the one or passing the other, I reckon it a thing impossible.”

“I shall not wait until night,” Tignonville answered curtly, a ring of defiance in his tone. “I shall go now! I’ll lie here no longer!”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“You will be mad if you do,” the other replied. He thought it the petulant outcry of youth tired of inaction; a protest, and nothing more.

He was speedily undeceived. “Mad or not, I am going!” Tignonville retorted. And he slid to the ground, and