On one or two of the savage faces--the faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their wrongs--flashed an avaricious gleam.

A safe-conduct?
To avenge, to slay, to kill--and to go safe! For some minds such a thing has an invincible fascination.

A man thrust himself forward.
"Ay, I'll have it!" he cried.

"Give it here!" "It is yours," Count Hannibal answered, "if you will carry ten words to Marshal Tavannes--when I am gone." The man's neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"And Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely," he said.
But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand.
"If I take the message!" he muttered in a grim aside.

"Do you think me mad ?" And then aloud he cried, "Ay, I'll take your message! Give me the paper." "You swear you will take it ?" The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and went forward.