"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.
"Absurd! The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,
"you are like so many of our people! You think a Catholic capable of the
worst."
"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.
"That's over now, if people would only understand. This wedding has put
an end to all that. But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly; and
he stopped. "Instead, let me take you home."
"If you please. Carlat and the servants should be below."
He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with
his other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase,
that by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace. Here a mob of
armed servants, of lacqueys, and footboys, some bearing torches, and some
carrying their masters' cloaks and galoshes, loitered to and fro. Had
M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a trifle less occupied
with his own importance, he might have noted more than one face which
looked darkly on him; he might have caught more than one overt sneer at
his expense. But in the business of summoning Carlat--Mademoiselle de
Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the contemptuous
"Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and the "Southern
dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the livery of the
King's brother. He was engaged in finding the steward, and in aiding him
to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a new acquirement, which
he had picked up since he came to Paris, he made a way for her through
the crowd. A moment, and the three, followed by half a dozen armed
servants, bearing pikes and torches, detached themselves from the throng,
and crossing the courtyard, with its rows of lighted windows, passed out
by the gate between the Tennis Courts, and so into the Rue des Fosses de
St. Germain.
Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening still
contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the church of
St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after nine: the heat
of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and dulled the faint
distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make itself heard above
the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a subdued hum. As
Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the Cloister of St. Germain,
where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots,
had been wounded, she pressed her escort's hand, and involuntarily drew
nearer to him. But he laughed at her.