Count Hannibal: A Romance of the Court of France

It was late evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their journey. The glow of sunset had faded, but...

In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean, dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect more informing than a blind wall, tw...

It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the higher name--should so entirely posse...

The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one of those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat lands of Western Poitou. The horses,...

Where the old wall of Paris, of which no vestige remains, ran down on the east to the north bank of the river, the space in the angle between the Seine and the ramparts beyond t...

At the foot of the staircase Tignonville paused. The droning Norman voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before him on the left. He caught a jest, the...

Tavannes, we know, had been slow to obey the summons. Emerging from the crowd, he found that the King, with Retz and Rambouillet, his Marshal des Logis, had retired to the farth...

M. de Tavannes smiled. Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered; as if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door at her elbow, chilled her. And then came...

In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure o...

The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber. She had writhed since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer. The slow declension of the day, the ev...

It is the wont of the sex to snatch at an ell where an inch is offered, and to press an advantage in circumstances in which a man, acknowledging the claims of generosity, scrupl...

M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of things he would have lain where he was, and groaned. But when a man has once turned his back on death he is...

It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle. The fog which had masked the van a...

La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood tripped him, the lissom branches of the...

But that only the more roused the devil in the man; that, and the knowledge that he had his own headstrong act to thank for the position. He looked on the panic-stricken people...

The movements of the women had overturned two of the candles; a third had guttered out. The three which still burned, contending pallidly with the daylight that each moment grew...

It was Tignonville's salvation that the men who crowded the long white- walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring lights, were of all classes. There were bu...

In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into the Rue St. Honore; and the roar o...

Little by little--while they fought below--the gloom had thickened, and night had fallen in the room above. But Mademoiselle would not have candles brought. Seated in the darkne...

Count Hannibal remained seated, his chin sunk on his breast, until his ear assured him that the three men had descended the stairs to the floor below. Then he rose, and, taking...

"Fear him?" Madame St. Lo answered; and, to the surprise of the Countess, she made a little face of contempt. "No; why should I fear him? I fear him no more than the puppy leapi...

The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To strike blindly, to strike without que...

So far excitement had supported Tignonville in his escape. It was only when he knew himself safe, when he heard Madame St. Lo's footstep in the courtyard and knew that in a mome...

The impulse of La Tribe's foot as he landed had driven the boat into the stream. It drifted slowly downward, and if naught intervened, would take the ground on Count Hannibal's...

The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates country folk were pressing into the...

We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost to unscrupulousness, which the...

As the exertion of power is for the most part pleasing, so the exercise of that which a woman possesses over a man is especially pleasant. When in addition a risk of no ordinary...

Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once. Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his eyes riveted on her, until she ro...

Thrice she hummed it, bland and smiling. Then from the neighbouring group came an interruption. The wine he had drunk had put it into Bigot's head to snatch a kiss from Suzanne;...

"But why," Madame St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stay in this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddle would set us in Angers?"

We have it on record that before the Comte de la Rochefoucauld left the Louvre that night he received the strongest hints of the peril which threatened him; and at least one wri...

And that troubled M. la Tribe no little, although he did not impart his thoughts to his companion. Instead they talked in whispers of the things which had happened; of the Admir...

It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the Countess. She could not doubt that h...

"But, M. le Comte," he said, "my instructions from Monsieur were to proceed to carry out his Majesty's will in co-operation with you, who, I understood, would bring letters _de...

The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they alighted, dead weary. The men, when they had cared for the horses, followed the example; for Badelon would suffe...

Fear leapt into Mademoiselle's eyes, but she commanded herself. She signed to Madame Carlat to be silent, and they listened, gazing at one another, hoping against hope that the...