Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack, which she neither
defined nor acknowledged. Or possibly it came of the night air, August
though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the remembrance of Count
Hannibal's smile. Whatever its origin, she took it to bed with her and
long after the house slept round her, long after the crowded quarter of
the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked
band, long after the tall houses in the gabled streets, from St. Antoine
to Montmartre and from St. Denis on the north to St. Jacques on the
south, had burst into rows of twinkling lights--nay, long after the
Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark, girdled by this strange
midnight brightness--she lay awake. At length she too slept, and dreamed
of home and the wide skies of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed
day and night by the Biscay tides.
CHAPTER II. HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES.
"Tavannes!"
"Sire."
Tavannes, we know, had been slow to obey the summons. Emerging from the
crowd, he found that the King, with Retz and Rambouillet, his Marshal des
Logis, had retired to the farther end of the Chamber; apparently Charles
had forgotten that he had called. His head a little bent--he was tall
and had a natural stoop--the King seemed to be listening to a low but
continuous murmur of voices which proceeded from the door of his closet.
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