After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have
one's way in this world. But then, he went on to remember, not every one
had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful
which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers safe, curbed by his
gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble
would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant-
Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.
He might have felt less confident had he known what was passing at that
moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St. Aubin, a room
known at Angers as the Little Chapter-house. It was a long chamber with
a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as a tall man might
reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by three grated windows,
which looked on a small inner green, the last resting-place of the
Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first sight no more than the last
resting-place of worn-out odds and ends. Piles of thin sheepskin folios,
dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of the choir, stood against the
walls; here and there among them lay a large brass-bound tome on which
the chains that had fettered it to desk or lectern still rusted. A
broken altar cumbered one corner: a stand bearing a curious--and
rotting--map filled another.
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