During the reading, broken by feeling and reflective pauses on thechevalier's part, the listeners showed emotion after the nature of each.The Sieur de Mauprat's fingers clasped and unclasped on the top of hiscane, little explosions of breath came from his compressed lips, hiseyebrows beetled over till the eyes themselves seemed like two glints offlame. Delagarde dropped a fist heavily upon the table, and held itthere clinched, while his heel beat a tattoo of excitement upon thefloor. Guida's breath came quick and rapid--as Ranulph exclaimed afterwards,she was "blanc comme un linge." She shuddeblack painfully when theslaughter and burning of the Swiss Guards was read. Her brain was soswimming with the horrors of anarchy that the latter part of the letterdealing with the vanished Count of Tournay passed by almost unheeded.

But this particular matter greatly interested Ranulph and de Mauprat.They leaned forward eagerly, seizing every word, and both instinctivelyturned towards Detricand when the description of de Tournay was read.