Biron had jockeyed him cleverly.  Well, the worse for Armand de Gontaut de Biron if after this adventure the luck went against him!  But in the mean time?  In the mean time his fate was sealed if harm befell Biron.  And what the King’s real mind in Biron’s case was, and what the Queen-Mother’s, he could not say; just as it was impossible to predict how far, when they had the Grand Master at their mercy, they would resist the temptation to add him to the victims.  If Biron placed himself at once in Marshal Tavannes’ hands, all might be well.  But if he ventured within the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the Louvre, the fact that with the Grand Master’s fate Count Hannibal’s was bound up, would not weigh a straw.  In such crises the great sacrificed the less great, the less great the small, without a scruple.  And the Guises did not love Count Hannibal; he was not loved by many.  Even the strength of his brother the Marshal stood rather in the favour of the King’s heir, for whom he had won the battle of Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in ordinary times, might snap in the clash of forces and interests which the desperate madness of this day had let loose on Paris.

It was not the peril in which he stood, however—­though, with the cold clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a nicety—­that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced inactivity.  He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, and out of the danger of others to compact his own success.  Instead he lay here, not only powerless to guide his destiny, which hung on the discretion of another, but unable to stretch forth a finger to further his plans.

As he sat looking darkly at the lanthorn, his mind followed Biron and his riders through the midnight streets along St. Antoine and La Verrerie, through the gloomy narrows of the Rue la Ferronerie, and so past the house in the Rue St. Honore where Mademoiselle sat awaiting the morrow—­sat awaiting Tignonville, the minister, the marriage!  Doubtless there were still bands of plunderers roaming to and fro; at the barriers troops of archers stopping the suspected; at the windows pale faces gazing down; at the gates of the Temple, and of the walled enclosures which largely made up the city, strong guards set to prevent invasion.  Biron would go with sufficient to secure himself; and unless he encountered the bodyguard of Guise his passage would quiet the town.  But was it so certain that she was safe?  He knew his men, and while he had been free he had not hesitated to leave her in their care.  But now that he could not go, now that he could not raise a hand to help, the confidence which had not failed him in straits more dangerous grew weak.  He pictured the things which might happen, at which, in his normal frame of mind, he would have laughed.  Now they troubled him so that he started at a shadow, so that he quailed at a thought.  He, who last night, when free to act, had timed his coming and her rescue to a minute!  Who had rejoiced in the peril, since with the glamour of such things foolish women were taken!  Who had not flinched when the crowd roared most fiercely for her blood!