A dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the apartment.

What the house contained of food and wine had been got together and set on the table; from the low, wide window, beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which extended the whole length of the room and looked on the street at the height of a man's head above the roadway, the shutters had been removed--doubtless by trembling and reluctant fingers.

To such eyes of passers-by as looked in, from the inferno of driving crowds and gleaming weapons which prevailed outside--and not outside only, but throughout Paris--the brilliant room and the laid table must have seemed strange indeed! To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.
When he did speak it was to count the servants.

"One, two, three, four, five," he said.

"And two of them women.