"Are you mad? Are you mad?" he
answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can.
Let us be gone! Come."
"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side
hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he
turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop through
the trap, he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight. Another
made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville, holding the
lanthorn, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained
with the fanatic.
The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories
overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to give
way, she swayed a little on her feet. But he did not notice it. He was
sunk in black rage--rage against her, rage against himself.
"Take the light," she muttered unsteadily. "And--and he must follow!"
"And you?"
But she could bear it no longer. "Oh, go," she wailed. "Go! Will you
never go? If you love me, if you ever loved me, I implore you to go."
He had betrayed little of a lover's feeling. But he could not resist
that appeal, and he turned silently. Seizing Tuez-les-Moines by the
other arm, he drew him by force to the trap.
"Quiet, fool," he muttered savagely when the man would have resisted,
"and go down! If we stay to kill him, we shall have no way of escape,
and his life will be dearly bought.
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