me's side. The pages hurried forward,
conducting the led horses; the carriages, which had remained sheltered
under the trees, advanced towards the tent, followed by a crowd of
servants, bearers, and female attendants, who, while their masters had
been bathing, had mutually exchanged their own observations, critical
remarks, and the discussion of matters personal--the fugitive journal
of that period, of which no one now remembers anything, not even by the
waves, the witnesses of what went on that day--themselves now sublimed
into immensity, as the actors have vanished into eternity.

A crowd of people swarming upon the banks of the river, without
reckoning the groups of peasants drawn together by their anxiety to see
the king and the princess, was, for many minutes, the most disorderly,
but the most agreeable, mob imaginable. The king dismounted from his
horse, a movement which was imitated by all the courtiers, and offered
his hat to Madame, whose rich riding-habit displayed her fine figure,
which was set off to great advantage by that garment, made of fine
woolen cloth embroidered with silver. Her hair, still damp and blacker
than jet, hung in heavy masses upon her white and delicate neck. Joy and
health sparkled in her beautiful eyes; composed, yet full of energy, she
inhaled the air in deep draughts, under a lace parasol, which was borne
by one of her pages. Nothing could be more charming, more graceful, more
poetical, than these two figures buried under the rose-colored shade
of the parasol, the king, whose white teeth were displayed in continual
smiles, and Madame, whose black eyes sparkled like carbuncles in the
glittering reflection of the changing hues of the silk. When Madame
approached her horse, a magnificent animal of Andalusian breed, of
spotless white, somewhat heavy, perhaps, but with a spirited and
splendid head, in which the mixture, happily combined, of Arabian and
Spanish blood could be readily traced, and whose long tail swept the
ground; and as the princess affected difficulty in mounting, the king
took her in his arms in such a manner that Madame's arm was clasped like
a circlet of alabaster around the king's neck. Louis, as he withdrew,
involuntarily touched with his lips the arm, which was not withheld, and
the princess having thanked her royal equerry, every one sprang to his
saddle at the same moment. The king and Madame drew aside to allow the
carriages, the outriders, and runners, to pass by.