But this for a time only.  As soon as she had made certain of the respite, and that she had until the morrow, her courage rose, and with it the instinct of which mention has been made.  Count Hannibal had granted a respite; short as it was, and no more than the barest humanity required, to grant one at all was not the act of the mere butcher who holds the trembling lamb, unresisting, in his hands.  It was an act—­no more, again be it said, than humanity required—­and yet an act which bespoke an expectation of some return, of some correlative advantage.  It was not in the part of the mere brigand.  Something had been granted.  Something short of the utmost in the captor’s power had been exacted.  He had shown that there were things he would not do.

Then might not something more be won from him?  A further delay, another point; something, no matter what, which could be turned to advantage?  With the brigand it is not possible to bargain.  But who gives a little may give more; who gives a day may give a week; who gives a week may give a month.  And a month?  Her heart leapt up.  A month seemed a lifetime, an eternity, to her who had but until to-morrow!

Yet there was one consideration which might have daunted a spirit less brave.  To obtain aught from Tavannes it was needful to ask him, and to ask him it was needful to see him; and to see him before that to-morrow which meant so much to her.  It was necessary, in a word, to run some risk; but without risk the card could not be played, and she did not hesitate.  It might turn out that she was wrong, that the man was not only pitiless and without bowels of mercy, but lacked also the shred of decency for which she gave him credit, and on which she counted.  In that case, if she sent for him—­but she would not consider that case.

The position of the window, while it increased the women’s safety, debarred them from all knowledge of what was going forward, except that which their ears afforded them.  They had no means of judging whether Tavannes remained in the house or had sallied forth to play his part in the work of murder.  Madame Carlat, indeed, had no desire to know anything.  In that room above stairs, with the door double-locked, lay a hope of safety in the present, and of ultimate deliverance; there she had a respite from terror, as long as she kept the world outside.  To her, therefore, the notion of sending for Tavannes, or communicating with him, came as a thunderbolt.  Was her mistress mad?  Did she wish to court her fate?  To reach Tavannes they must apply to his riders, for Carlat and the men-servants were confined above.  Those riders were grim, brutal men, who might resort to rudeness on their own account.  And Madame, clinging in a paroxysm of terror to her mistress, suggested all manner of horrors, one on top of the other, until she increased her own terror tenfold.  And yet, to do her justice, nothing that even her frenzied imagination suggested exceeded the things which the streets of Paris, fruitful mother of horrors, were witnessing at that very hour.  As we now know.