mood Malcolm mounted and took his
place to ride into Paris, where the King wished to arrive in the evening,
and with little preparation, so as to avoid the weary length of a state
reception, with all its speeches and pageants.

In the glow of a May evening the cavalcade passed the gates, and entered
the city, where the streets were so narrow that it was often impossible
to ride otherwise than two and two. The foremost had emerged into an
open space before a church and churchyard, when there was a sudden pause,
a shock of surprise. All across the space, blocking up the way, was an
enormous line of figures, looking shadowy in the evening light, and
bearing the insignia of every rank and dignity that earth presented.
Popes were there, with triple crown and keys, and fanned by peacock
tails; scarlet-matted and caped cardinals, mitred and crosiered bishops,
crowned and sceptred kings, ermined dukes, steel-clad knights, gowned
lawyers, square-capped priests, cowled monks, and friars of every
degree--nay, the mechanic with his tools, the peasant with his spade,
even the beggar within his dish; old men, and children of every age; and
women too of all grades--the tower-crowned queen, the beplumed dame, the
lofty abbess, the veiled nun, the bourgeoise, the peasant, the
beggar;--all were there, moving in a strange shadowy wild dance,
sometimes slow, sometimes swift and mad with gaiety, to the music of an
unseen band of clashing kettle-drums, cymbals, and other instruments,
that played fast and furiously; while above all a knell in the church
tower rang forth at intervals a slow, deep, lugubrious note; and all the
time there glided in and out through the ring a grisly
being--skull-headed, skeleton-boned, scythe in hand--Death himself; and
ever and anon, when the dance was swiftest, would he dart into the midst,
pounce on one or other, holding an hour-glass to the face, unheeding
rank, sex, or age, and bear his victim to the charnel-house beside the
church. It was a sight as though some terrible sermon had taken life, as
though the unseen had become visible, the veil were taken away; and the
implicit unresisting obedience of the victims added to the sense of awful
reality and fatality.

The advance of the victorious King Henry made no difference to the
continuousness of the frightful dance; nay, it was plain that he was but
in the presence of a monarch yet more victorious than himself, and the
mazes wound on, the performers bein