But he did not offer to touch her, and at length he turned about. First
one and then the other of her women quailed and shrank under his gaze; he
seemed about to add something. But he did not speak. The sentence he
had left unfinished, the long look he bent on the weeping girl as he
turned from her, spoke more eloquently of the future than a score of
orations.
"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes_!"
CHAPTER XII. IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE.
It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for
Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the
higher name--should so entirely possess the souls of those who harbour it
that the greatest events and the most astounding catastrophes, even
measures which set their mark for all time on a nation, are to them of
importance only so far as they affect the pursuit of the fair one.
As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes,
beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires of
his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or wonder.
He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughter-house, where for a week a
masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors and the
close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn garments,
broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps.
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