After it Badelon, with a gaping wound in his knee, and
Bigot, bleeding from a dozen hurts, walked over the bridge, and stood on
either side of the saddle, smiling foolishly at the man on the horse.
"Leave me!" he muttered. "Leave me!" He made a feeble movement with his
hand, as if it held a weapon; then his head sank lower. It was Count
Hannibal. His thigh was broken, and there was a lance-head in his arm.
The Countess looked at him, then beyond him, past him into the darkness.
"Are there no more?" she whispered tremulously. "No more?
Tignonville--my--"
Badelon shook his head. The Countess covered her face and wept.
CHAPTER XXXIV. WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?
It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun
rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle.
The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its
retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to
sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the
causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the
gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it
through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at
Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a
nightmare.
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