For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.

"You'll join us, I think?" he said, with an undisguised sneer. "Then,
after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table
is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you
please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this
house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we have changed
places."

Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked in
his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion
along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left, where he had
seen from without that his orders to light and lay were being executed. A
dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment. What the
house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the
table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which
extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the
height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been
removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers. To such eyes of
passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming
weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout
Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange
indeed!

To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a
dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who
dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with
blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a
corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of
waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.