Count Hannibal stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the side of Suzanne's mule.

He smiled; and presently, as he turned away, he did a thing rare with him--he laughed outright.
A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself.

Few had seen Count Hannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as he laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn.

His men watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and there was shaking of heads over it.

The man who had singed the Pope's beard and chucked cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the most daring of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons were not of this world.
Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they known it.
He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature to love peril; not--in the main, though a little, perhaps--because he knew that the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stood between him and death; not, though again a little, perhaps, because she had confirmed his choice by conduct which a small man might have deprecated, but which a great man loved; but chiefly, because the events of the night had placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid of which he looked to recover all the ground he had lost--lost by his impulsive departure from the pall of conduct on which he had started.
Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by the rising of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolen the precious packet from his pillow.