travel-stained, fresh from the Flanders
road. The officers who bore the trophies we overtook on the stairs near
the door of the ante-chamber. Burning with resentment as I was, and
strung to the last pitch of excitement, I none the less remember that I
thought it an odd time to push in with a dog; but Monseigneur the Bishop
did not seem to see this. Whether he took a certain pleasure in
belittling the war-party, to whom he was opposed in his politics, or
merely knew his ground well, he went on, thrusting the _militaires_
aside with little ceremony; and as every one was as quick to give place
to him, as he was to advance, in a moment we were in the ante-chamber.

I had never been admitted before, and from the doorway, where I paused
in Bonnivet's keeping, I viewed the scene with an interest that for the
first time overcame my sense of injustice. The long room hummed with
talk; a crowd of churchmen and pages, with a sprinkling of the lesser
nobility, many lawyers and some soldiers, filled it from end to end. In
one corner were a group of tradesmen bearing plate for the Queen's
inspection: in another stood a knot of suitors with petitions; while
everywhere men, whose eager faces and expectant eyes were their best
petitions, watched the farther door with quivering lips, or sighed when
it opened, and emitted merely a councillor or a marquis. Several times a
masked lady flitted through the crowd, with a bow here and the honour of
her taper fingers there. The windows were open, the summer air entered;
and the murmur of the throng without, mingling with the stir of talk
within, seemed to add to the light and colour of the room.

My lord of Beauvais, with his chaplain and his pages at his shoulder,
was making in his stately way towards the farther door, when he met M.
de Chateauneuf, and paused to speak. When he escaped from him a dozen
clients, whose obsequious bows rendered evasion impossible, still
delayed him. And I had grown cold, and hot again, and he was but halfway
on his progress up the crowded room, when the inner door opened, half a
dozen voices cried "The Queen! The Queen!" and an usher with a silver
wand passed down the room and ranked the company on either side--not
without some struggling, and once a fierce oath, and twice a smothered
outcry.

Of the bevy of ladies in attendance, only half a dozen entered; for a
few paces within the doorway the Queen-Mother stood still to receive my
patron, who had advanced to me