Tavannes played his part. But his thoughts were elsewhere. Either he
took the poor wretch for Tignonville, or for the minister on whom his
mind was running; anyway he suffered him to slip under the belly of his
horse; then, to make matters worse, he wheeled to follow him in so
untimely and clumsy a fashion that his horse blocked the way and stopped
the pursuers in their tracks. The quarry slipped into an alley and
vanished. The hunters stood and blasphemed, and even for a moment seemed
inclined to resent the mistake. But Tavannes smiled; a broader smile
lightened the faces of the six iron-clad men behind him; and for some
reason the gang of ruffians thought better of it and slunk aside.

There are hard men, who feel scorn of the things which in the breasts of
others excite pity. Tavannes' lip curled as he rode on through the
streets, looking this way and that, and seeing what a King twenty-two
years old had made of his capital. His lip curled most of all when he
came, passing between the two tennis-courts, to the east gate of the
Louvre, and found the entrance locked and guarded, and all communication
between city and palace cut off. Such a proof of unkingly panic, in a
crisis wrought by the King himself, astonished him less a few minutes
later, when, the keys having been brought and the door opened, he entered
the courtyard of the fortress.

Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers and
arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly groups,
from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and strained jests
rose without ceasing. The weltering sun, of which the beams just topped
the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise on their armour, and
heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they
seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed
gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen,