Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve.  “Enough for me!” she cried passionately.  “I go no farther with you!”

“Ah?”

“No farther!” she repeated.  She was pale, she shivered.  “Many thanks, my cousin, but we part company here.  I do not go to Angers.  I have seen horrors enough.  I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours and the east road.  For you, I foresee what will happen.  You will perish between the hammer and the anvil.”

“Ah?”

“You play too fine a game,” she continued, her face quivering.  “Give over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her.  And wash your hands of her and hers.  Or you will see her fall, and fall beside her!  Give her to him, I say—­give her to him!”

“My wife?”

“Wife?” she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now.  “Is there a tie,” and she pointed after the vanishing procession, “that they cannot unloose?  That they will not unloose?  Is there a life which escapes if they doom it?  Did the Admiral escape?  Or Rochefoucauld?  Or Madame de Luns in old days?  I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see beforehand what will happen.  She will perish, and you with her.  Wife?  A pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night.”

“And at your door!” he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.

But she did not heed.  “I warned you of that!” she cried.  “And you would not believe me.  I told you he was following.  And I warn you of this.  You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte!  If Tignonville does not murder you in your bed—­”

“I hold him in my power.”

“Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you.  For me, I have seen enough and more than enough.  I go to Tours by the east road.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “As you please,” he said.

She flung away in disgust with him.  She could not understand a man who played fast and loose at such a time.  The game was too fine for her, its danger too apparent, the gain too small.  She had, too, a woman’s dread of the Church, a woman’s belief in the power of the dead hand to punish.  And in half an hour her orders were given.  In two hours her people were gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three of Tavannes’ riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way.  Count Hannibal stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the side of Suzanne’s mule.  He smiled; and presently, as he turned away, he did a thing rare with him—­he laughed outright.

A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself.  Few had seen Count Hannibal’s eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as he laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn.  His men watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and there was shaking of heads over it.  The man who had singed the Pope’s beard and chucked cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the most daring of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons were not of this world.