e the chair, and quite close to the window,
there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of birds. On this
table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some parchments, several pens,
and a large goblet of chased silver. A little further on was a brazier,
a praying stool in crimson velvet, relieved with small bosses of gold.
Finally, at the extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and
yellow damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary
fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the sleeplessness
of Louis XI., was still to be seen two hundred years ago, at the
house of a councillor of state, where it was seen by old Madame Pilou,
celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name "Arricidie" and of "la Morale
Vivante".

Such was the chamber which was called "the retreat where Monsieur Louis
de France says his prayers."

At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this retreat
was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour before; night was
come, and there was only one flickering wax candle set on the table to
light five persons variously grouped in the chamber.

The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in
breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose coat
with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures. This splendid
costume, on which the light played, seemed glazed with flame on every
fold. The man who wore it had his armorial bearings embroidered on his
breast in vivid colors; a chevron accompanied by a deer passant. The
shield was flanked, on the right by an olive branch, on the left by a
deer's antlers. This man wore in his girdle a rich dagger whose hilt,
of silver gilt, was chased in the form of a helmet, and surmounted by a
count's coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien, and a head
held high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at the
second, craft.

He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand, behind
the arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully doubled up, his
knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a very badly accoutred personage.
Let the reader imagine in fact, on the rich seat of Cordova leather, two
crooked knees, two thin thighs, poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a
body enveloped in a cloak of fustian, with fur trimming of which more
leather than hair was visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of
the worst sort of black cloth, bordered with a c