"And if he will not, I will!" Tavannes repeated. "Let that be the test,
sire."

The King wheeled suddenly to Father Pezelay. "You hear, father?" he
said. "What say you?"

The priest's face grew sallow, and more sallow. He knew that the walls
of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of
Biron's would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning
culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children, their
wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught but to
stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb from limb
before they died! The challenge, therefore, was one-sided and unfair;
but for that very reason it shook him. The astuteness of the man who,
taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him with dread. He
dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the offer. And
meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their beards, were on
him. At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which had lost its
boldness and assurance.

"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but
for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word, and
set at nought his Christian orders. For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or
no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.' For you go but to your
own, and your own will receive you!"

"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.

"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with passion. "His Majesty
knows whether I serve him."

"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all serve
me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood
of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in
mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow! Ay, you will!
you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with
a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as you! Foucauld was
better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my God!"

And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so
often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst
into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on Bussy with
the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer
of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the
cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the
shameless women who lined the walls; on al