so lately full of voices, are suddenly
given back to silence.

Reverie carries one far; and one comes by long dreaming to reach, as it
were, another planet.

Gwynplaine suddenly awoke from such a dream. He was alone. The chamber
was empty. He had not even observed that the House had been adjourned.
All the peers had departed, even his sponsors. There only remained here
and there some of the lower officers of the House, waiting for his
lordship to depart before they put the covers on and extinguished the
lights.

Mechanically he placed his hat on his head, and, leaving his place,
directed his steps to the great door opening into the gallery. As he was
passing through the opening in the bar, a doorkeeper relieved him of his
peer's robes. This he scarcely felt. In another instant he was in the
gallery.

The officials who remained observed with astonishment that the peer had
gone out without bowing to the throne!

CHAPTER VIII.

HE WOULD BE A GOOD BROTHER, WERE HE NOT A GOOD SON.

There was no one in the gallery.

Gwynplaine crossed the circular space, from whence they had removed the
arm-chair and the tables, and where there now remained no trace of his
investiture. Candelabra and lustres, placed at certain intervals, marked
the way out. Thanks to this string of light, he retraced without
difficulty, through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he
had followed on his arrival with the King-at-Arms and the Usher of the
Black Rod. He saw no one, except here and there some old lord with tardy
steps, plodding along heavily in front of him.

Suddenly, in the silence of those great deserted rooms, bursts of
indistinct exclamations reached him, a sort of nocturnal clatter unusual
in such a place. He directed his steps to the place whence this noise
proceeded, and found himself in a spacious hall, dimly lighted, which
was one of the exits from the House of Lords. He saw a great glass door
open, a flight of steps, footmen and links, a square outside, and a few
coaches waiting at the bottom of the steps.

This was the spot from which the noise which he had heard had proceeded.

Within the door, and under the hall lamp, was a noisy group in a storm
of gestures and of voices.

Gwynplaine approached in the gloom.

They were quarrelling. On one side there were ten or twelve young lords,
who wanted to go out; on the other, a man, with his hat on, like
themselves, upright and with a haughty brow, who