"By God and His Christ, I believe that I do," said he.
The Countess took a dagger from her girdle, unsheathed it, and put it in his hand. She knelt down before him as a woman kneels to a saint in a church. With a sudden frenzy she tore open the front of her gown so that all her bosom was bare, and then as suddenly whipt her hands behind her back.
"Now kill me, Prosper," she whined; "for I love thee, and I have killed thy love Isoult."
So she bowed her head and waited.
But Prosper gave a terrible cry, and turned and left her kneeling. He ran down the corridor blindly, not knowing how or whither he fared. At the end of it was a door which gave on to the Minstrel Gallery over the great hall. Into this trap he ran and fetched up against the parapet. Below him in the hall were countless faces—as it seemed, a sea of white faces, mouthing, jeering, and cursing. He stood glaring blankly at them, fetching his breath. Words flew about—horrible! Out of all he caught here and there a scrap, each tainted with hate and unspeakable disgrace.
"Come down, thou polluter." Again, "Serve him like his wench."—"Trounce him with his woman."—"Send the pair to hell!"
The dawning attention he began to pay sobered his panic, quenched it. What he learned by listening struck him cold. He took pains; he could hear every word now, surely. He was really very attentive. The chartered rascals packed in the hall took this for irresolution, and howled at him to their hearts' content. Once more Prosper held to his motto—bided the time. The time came with the coming of Master Porges—that smug and solemn man—into the assembly. The seneschal looked round him with a benignant air, as who should say, "My children all!" The listening man in the gallery watched all this.
Suddenly his sword flashed out. Prosper vaulted over the gallery, dropped down into the thick of them, and began to kill. Kill indeed he did. Right and left, like a man with a scythe, he sliced a way for himself. There were soldiers, pikemen, and guards in the press: there was none there so tall as he, nor with such a reach, above all, there was none whose rage made him cold and his anger merry. However they were, they could scarcely have faced the hard glitter of his blue eyes, the smile of his fixed lips. He could have carved with a dagger, with a bludgeon, a flail, or a whip. As it was, to a long arm was added a long sword, which whistled through the air, but through flesh went quiet. There had been blows at first from behind and at the side of him. The long mowing arms stayed them. It became a butchery of sheep before he was midway of the hall, thence the rest of his passage to the door was between two huddled heaps, with not a flick in either.
He reached his goal, shot the bolt, and turned, leaning against the door. The heaped walls of that human sea had by this flowed over his lane; now they stood eyeing him who faced them and wiped his blade with a piece cut from the arras—eyeing him askance with silly, shocked faces. Behind them a few grunted or sobbed; but for the most part he had done his work only too well.
Having wiped exquisitely his sword and sheathed it, Prosper took a step forward. The heap of men huddled again.