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Updated: June 14, 2025
"M. le Comte," he stammered, "I do not understand this language! Nor this heat, which may be real or not! All I say is, if there be foul play here " "If!" Tavannes retorted. "At least, if there be, there be gibbets too! And I see necks!" he added, leaning forward. "Necks!" And then, with a look of flame, "Let no man leave this table until I return," he cried, "or he will have to deal with me.
"You can guess it?" Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as if that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold blood, "Nay, you know it! You heard it from the archer at the door. You heard him say, 'No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for child. So says the King. You heard it, but you fence with me.
"But you jest!" the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in his chair. He was a man more highly named for address than courage; and, like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap. "You jest, surely, Monsieur! Men do not lose his Majesty's letters, by the way." "When they contain his Majesty's will, no," Tavannes answered, with a peculiar smile. "You imply, then?"
But when he looked back a minute later, Tavannes was within sight, following the party with a stern face; and not Tavannes only. Bigot, with two of the ten men who hitherto had been missing, was with him.
It saved him from the Provost, but it brought him face to face and eye to eye with Count Hannibal, who stood in the first rank at his brother's elbow. Tavannes stared an instant as if he doubted his eyesight. Then, as doubt gave slow place to certainty, and surprise to amazement, he smiled. And after a moment he looked another way. Tignonville's heart gave a great bump and seemed to stand still.
"Imply?" he answered. "I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau." "But " "But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which he does not mean to be carried out. There are things which start up before the eye," Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on the table, "and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter are the more important.
"Will Monsieur de Retz tell us what other course lies open?" quoth the bluff Tavannes. "Some other course must be found," cried the King, rousing himself. "It must be found, do you hear? I will not have you touch the life of my friend the Admiral. I will not have it by the Blood!"
"There's no going out to-night," was the answer to the impatient rider. "Tut, man, I am the Sieur de Laval, riding north on urgent affairs. My servants left at noon. Be quick. Open!" "Who ordered this folly?" "The Marshal Tavannes. Go argue with him, if your mightiness has the courage." The horseman was too old a campaigner to waste time in wrangling.
"It would be if I had two legs," Tavannes answered, with a grimace, half- snarl, half-smile. "As it is where is that dagger? It leaves me every minute." It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground. Badelon took it up, and set it on the bed within reach of his master's hand. Bigot swore fiercely. "It would be farther still," he growled, "if you would be guided by me, my lord.
"He stays with his mistress." "We reached our present distinction through an absolute devotion to our masters, a noble course, my dear Tavannes, which I see that you also have adopted," replied Albert de Gondi. The three courtiers walked on in silence. At the moment when they parted, on meeting their servants who then escorted them, two men glided swiftly along the walls of the rue de l'Autruche.
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