second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook a
little. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the disordered
table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims before they
tore them to pieces. "Open! Open!" the mob howled: and a man dashed in
the window with his pike.

In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of a
second. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame the
words, would they have been audible. But something she must have looked,
and something of import, though no other than he marked or understood it.
For in a flash he was at the window and his hand was raised for silence.

"Back!" he thundered. "Back, knaves!" And he whistled shrilly. "Do
what you will," he went on in the same tone, "but not here! Pass on!
Pass on!--do you hear?"

But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence brutal
and unquestioning they continued to howl, "Open! Open!" while the man
who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the
hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it.
Then, laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot
against the wall below. Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed
to dilate with the fury and violence of his character.

"Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my riders and scatter you? Must I
flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes;
beware of me! I have claws and teeth and I bite!" he continued, the
scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he
flung them. "Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where
I am! Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man! I will
flay your backs. Go! Go! I am Tavannes!"

But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his
arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was
exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a
dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As many more
tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window,
and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan, the
cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led
the way.

Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to them,
his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the cripple,
raised on the other