ugh the state apartments conversing in suppressed tones,
some anxiously expecting the entrance of the King, and others as
impatiently awaiting the arrival of the all-powerful minister. One of
these groups, and that perhaps the most inimical of all that brilliant
assemblage to the Cardinal, was composed of the two MM. de Marillac, the
Duc de Guise, and the Marquis de Bassompierre. As they conversed
earnestly with one another, the three first-named nobles remained grave
and stern, as though they had met together to discuss some subject of
vital and absorbing interest rather than to participate in the
festivities of a monarch, while even Bassompierre himself seemed ill at
ease, and strove in vain to assume his usual light and frivolous
demeanour.

"His Eminence moves tardily to night," he said in reply to a remark of
the Duke. "Can it be that we shall not have the honour of seeing him
exhibit his crimson robes on this magnificent occasion?"

"It would seem so," was the moody rejoinder, "for time wears, and the
King himself cannot delay his entrance much longer. Be wary, gentlemen,
for should Richelieu indeed arrive, he will be dangerous to-night. I
watched him narrowly at noon, and I remarked that he smiled more than
once when there was no visible cause for mirth, and you well known what
his smiles portend."

"Too well," said the Marechal de Marillac; "death, or at best disgrace
to some new victim. Shame to our brave France that she should submit
even for a day to be thus priest-ridden!"

By an excess of caution the four nobles had gradually retreated to an
obscure recess, half concealed by some heavy drapery; and Bassompierre,
in an attitude of easy indifference, stood leaning against the
tapestried panels that divided the sumptuous apartment which they
occupied from an inner closet that had not been thrown open to the
guests. Unfortunately, however, the peculiar construction of this closet
was unknown even to the brilliant Gentleman of the Bedchamber, or he
would have been at once aware that they could not have chosen a more
dangerous position in which to discuss any forbidden topic. The trite
proverb that "walls have ears" was perhaps never more fully exemplified
than when applied to those of the Louvre at that period; many of them,
and those all connected with the more public apartments, being composed
of double panelling, between which a sufficient space had been left to
admit of the passage of an eavesdropper, an