But if he ventured within the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the Louvre, the fact that with the Grand Master's fate Count Hannibal's was bound up, would not weigh a straw.

In such crises the great sacrificed the less great, the less great the small, without a scruple.

And the Guises did not love Count Hannibal; he was not loved by many.

Even the strength of his brother the Marshal stood rather in the favour of the King's heir, for whom he had won the battle of Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in ordinary times, might snap in the clash of forces and interests which the desperate madness of this day had let loose on Paris.
It was not the peril in which he stood, however--though, with the cold clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a nicety--that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced inactivity.

He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, and out of the danger of others to compact his own success.