Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled. Sudden stormy changes, from indifference
to ferocity, from irony to invective, were characteristic of the man.

"Tortured!" he repeated grimly. "You talk of torture while Piles and
Pardaillan, Teligny and Rochefoucauld lie dead in the street! While your
cause sinks withered in a night, like a gourd! While your servants fall
butchered, and France rises round you in a tide of blood! Bah!"--with a
gesture of disdain--"you make me also talk, and I have no love for talk,
and small time. Mademoiselle, you at least act and do not talk. By your
leave I return in an hour, and I bring with me--shall it be my priest, or
your minister?"

She looked at him with the face of one who awakes slowly to the full
horror, the full dread, of her position. For a moment she did not
answer. Then--

"A minister," she muttered, her voice scarcely audible.

He nodded. "A minister," he said lightly. "Very well, if I can find
one." And walking to the shattered, gaping casement--through which the
cool morning air blew into the room and gently stirred the hair of the
unhappy girl--he said some words to the man on guard outside. Then he
turned to the door, but on the threshold he paused, looked with a strange
expression at the pair, and signed to Carlat and the servants to go out
before him.

"Up, and lie close above!" he growled. "Open a window or look out, and
you will pay dearly for it! Do you hear? Up! Up! You, too, old crop-
ears. What! would you?"--with a sudden glare as Carlat hesitated--"that