Too Short a Spoon

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 the lanthorn from the table, on which
Peridol had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like the
window, stood in a recess--in this case the prolongation of the passage.
A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and
he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark,
windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment. Placing the
lanthorn on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the
window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded edge, looked out.

He knew, rather than saw, that Peridol had told the truth. The smell of
the aguish flats which fringed that part of Paris rose strong in his
nostrils. He guessed that the sluggish arm of the Seine which divided
the Arsenal from the Ile des Louviers crawled below; but the night was
dark, and it was impossible to discern land from water. He fancied that
he could trace the outline of the island--an uninhabited place, given up
to wood piles; but the lights of the college quarter beyond it, which
rose feebly twinkling to the crown of St. Genevieve, confused his sight
and rendered the nearer gloom more opaque. From that direction and from
the Cite to his right came sounds which told of a city still heaving in
its blood-stained sleep, and even in its dreams planning further
excesses. Now a distant shot, and now a faint murmur on one of the
bridges, or a far-off cry, raucous, sudden, curdled the blood. But even
of what was passing under cover of the darkness, he could learn little;
and after standing awhile with a hand on either side of the window he
found the night air chill. He stepped back, and, descending to the
floor, uncovered the lanthorn and set it on the table. His thoughts
travelled back to the preparations he had made the night before with a
view to securing Mademoiselle's person, and he considered, with a grim
smile, how little he had foreseen that within twenty-four hours he would
himself be a prisoner. Presently, finding his mask oppressive, he
removed it, and, laying it on the table before him, sat scowling at the
light.