The priest’s face grew sallow, and more sallow.  He knew that the walls of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of Biron’s would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children, their wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught but to stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb from limb before they died!  The challenge, therefore, was one-sided and unfair; but for that very reason it shook him.  The astuteness of the man who, taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him with dread.  He dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the offer.  And meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their beards, were on him.  At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which had lost its boldness and assurance.

“It is not for me to clear myself,” he cried, shrill and violent, “but for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King’s word, and set at nought his Christian orders.  For you, Count Hannibal, heretic, or no better than heretic, it is easy to say ‘I go.’  For you go but to your own, and your own will receive you!”

“Then you will not go?” with a jeer.

“At your command?  No!” the priest shrieked with passion.  “His Majesty knows whether I serve him.”

“I know,” Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, “that you all serve me when it pleases you!  That you are all sticks of the same faggot, wood of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and sluggards in mine!  You kill to-day and you’ll lay it to me to-morrow!  Ay, you will! you will!” he repeated frantically, and drove home the asseveration with a fearful oath.  “The dead are as good servants as you!  Foucauld was better!  Foucauld?  Foucauld?  Ah, my God!”

And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he so often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face burst into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all—­on Bussy with the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques, the betrayer of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on Cocconnas the cruel—­on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter, and on the shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this sobbing man for their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and gain their purposes, trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.

One looked at another in consternation.  Fear grew in eyes that a moment before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were hectic.  If he changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence could be placed on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe?  Whose turn might it not be to-morrow?  Or who might not be held accountable for the deeds done this day?  Many, from whom remorse had seemed far distant a while before, shuddered and glanced behind them.  It was as if the dead who lay stark without the doors, ay, and the countless dead of Paris, with whose shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in shadowy shape into the hall; and there, standing beside their murderers, had whispered with their cold breath in the living ears, “A reckoning!  A reckoning!  As I am, thou shalt be!”