"I do not believe it!" she said. "I do not believe it! You
who save Angers will not destroy him!" And then her woman's mood
changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh no, you will not!
You will not!" she wailed. And she dropped on her knees before him, and
holding up her clasped hands, "God will put it in your heart to spare
him--and me!"
He rose with a stifled oath, took two steps from her, and in a tone
hoarse and constrained, "Go!" he said. "Go, or sit! Do you hear,
Madame? You try my patience too far!"
But when she had gone his face was radiant. He had brought her, he had
brought all, to the point at which he aimed. To-morrow his triumph
awaited him. To-morrow he who had cast her down would raise her up.
He did not foresee what a day would bring forth.
CHAPTER XXVIII. IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the
early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates
country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with
milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or
chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be
gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and
twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of
interrogation.
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