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Updated: September 2, 2025
The other did the same, and again they watched one another, their eyes seeming to grow smaller and smaller. Gradually a smile had birth on Tignonville's lips. He thrust! It was parried! He thrust again parried! Tavannes, grown still more cautious, gave a yard. Tignonville pushed on, but did not allow confidence to master caution. He began, indeed, to taunt his adversary; to flout and jeer him.
And with a nod here and there, he passed to the door, followed by Mergey and Chamont, two gentlemen of his suite. Nancay raised the curtain with an obsequious gesture. "Pardon me, M. le Comte," he said, "do you go to his Highness's?" "For a few minutes, Nancay." "Permit me to go with you. The guards may be set." "Do so, my friend," Rochefoucauld answered. "Ah, Tignonville, is it you?"
Madame's heart grew sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing light a horse's length before his men with only Tignonville beside him. She held her breath would the shock never come? If Badelon had not seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And then, even as she moved, they met!
He requires that the said Hannibal de Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M. de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac.
Tignonville held too good an opinion of himself to suspect the other of badinage; and thus encouraged, he pushed his way to the front of the circle. During his absence with his betrothed, the crowd in the Chamber had grown thin, the candles had burned an inch shorter in the sconces.
Tignonville hesitated, but not for long; a burst of voices heralded a new danger, and he shrank into a doorway. Along one of the lanes a troop of children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing and leaping round something which they dragged by a string.
One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way. With presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and, huddling her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at his heels.
M. de Tavannes" she named her husband nervously, as conscious of the weak spot "before he rode abroad laid strict orders on all to keep within, since the smallest matter might kindle the city. Therefore, M. de Tignonville, I request, nay I entreat," she continued with greater urgency, as she saw his gesture of denial, "you to stay here until he returns."
At the foot of the staircase Tignonville paused. The droning Norman voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before him on the left. He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew that at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him.
"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the fearlessness of scorn. "Another step and I rouse the house! M. de Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not retire " "He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer. "In which? In which?" "Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its contempt. "Try them.
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