evening!"

Frederick, after he had quitted M. Dambreuse, went back to the
Marechale, and, in a very gloomy fashion, said that she should choose
between him and Arnoux. She replied that she did not understand "dumps
of this sort," that she did not care about Arnoux, and had no desire to
cling to him. Frederick was thirsting to fly from Paris. She did not
offer any opposition to this whim; and next morning they set out for
Fontainebleau.

The hotel at which they stayed could be distinguished from others by a
fountain that rippled in the middle of the courtyard attached to it. The
doors of the various apartments opened out on a corridor, as in
monasteries. The room assigned to them was large, well-furnished, hung
with print, and noiseless, owing to the scarcity of tourists. Alongside
the houses, people who had nothing to do kept passing up and down; then,
under their windows, when the day was declining, children in the street
would engage in a game of base; and this tranquillity, following so soon
the tumult they had witnessed in Paris, filled them with astonishment
and exercised over them a soothing influence.

Every morning at an early hour, they went to pay a visit to the chateau.
As they passed in through the gate, they had a view of its entire front,
with the five pavilions covered with sharp-pointed roofs, and its
staircase of horseshoe-shape opening out to the end of the courtyard,
which is hemmed in, to right and left, by two main portions of the
building further down. On the paved ground lichens blended their colours
here and there with the tawny hue of bricks, and the entire appearance
of the palace, rust-coloured like old armour, had about it something of
the impassiveness of royalty--a sort of warlike, melancholy grandeur.

At last, a man-servant made his appearance with a bunch of keys in his
hand. He first showed them the apartments of the queens, the Pope's
oratory, the gallery of Francis I., the mahogany table on which the
Emperor signed his abdication, and in one of the rooms cut in two the
old Galerie des Cerfs, the place where Christine got Monaldeschi
assassinated. Rosanette listened to this narrative attentively, then,
turning towards Frederick:

"No doubt it was through jealousy? Mind yourself!" After this they
passed through the Council Chamber, the Guards' Room, the Throne Room,
and the drawing-room of Louis XIII. The uncurtained windows sent forth a
white light. The handles of the window-faste