stopped as with wool!  To go up and down and shake into life the guests whose royal lodgings daybreak would turn to a shambles reeking with their blood!  They slept, the gentle Teligny, the brave Pardaillan, the gallant Rochefoucauld, Piles the hero of St. Jean, while the cruel city stirred rustling about them, and doom crept whispering to the door.  They slept, they and a thousand others, gentle and simple, young and old; while the half-mad Valois shifted between two opinions, and the Italian woman, accursed daughter of an accursed race, cried, “Hark!” at her window, and looked eastwards for the dawn.

And the women?  The woman he was to marry?  And the others?  In an access of passion he thrust aside those who stood between, he pushed his way, disregarding complaints, disregarding opposition, to the door.  But the pikes lay across it, and he could not utter a syllable to save his life.  He would have flung himself on the doorkeepers, for he was losing control of himself; but as he drew back for the spring, a hand clutched his sleeve, and a voice he loathed hummed in his ear.

“No, fair play, noble sir; fair play!” the cripple Jehan muttered, forcibly drawing him aside.  “All start together, and it’s no man’s loss.  But if there is any little business,” he continued, lowering his tone and peering with a cunning look into the other’s face, “of your own, noble sir, or your friends’, anything or anybody you want despatched, count on me.  It were better, perhaps, you didn’t appear in it yourself, and a man you can trust—­”

“What do you mean?” the young man cried, recoiling from him.

“No need to look surprised, noble sir,” the lean man, who had joined them, answered in a soothing tone.  “Who kills to-night does God service, and who serves God much may serve himself a little.  ’Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,’ says good Father Pezelay.”

“Hear, hear!” the cripple chimed in eagerly, his impatience such that he danced on his toes.  “He preaches as well as the good father his master!  So frankly, noble sir, what is it?  What is it?  A woman grown ugly?  A rich man grown old, with perchance a will in his chest?  Or a young heir that stands in my lord’s way?  Whichever it be, or whatever it be, trust me and our friend here, and my butcher’s gully shall cut the knot.”

Tignonville shook his head.

“But something there is,” the lean man persisted obstinately; and he cast a suspicious glance at Tignonville’s clothes.  It was evident that the two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there.  “Have the dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers’ shops on the bridge to fill your purse again?  If so, take my word, it were better to go three than one, and we’ll enlist.”

“Ay, we know shops on the bridge where you can plunge your arm elbow-deep in gold,” the cripple muttered, his eyes sparkling greedily.  “There’s Baillet’s, noble sir!  There’s a shop for you!  And there’s the man’s shop who works for the King.  He’s lame like me.  And I know the way to all.  Oh, it will be a merry night if they ring before the dawn.  It must be near daybreak now.  And what’s that?”