ng men to carry a cushion or fetch a dog annoyed
him.

There were those who observed this absence from the crowd in the
ante-rooms. In the midst of so much intrigue and continual striving for
power, designing men, on the one hand, were ever on the alert for what
they imagined would prove willing instruments; and on the other, the
Prince's councillors kept a watchful eye on the dispositions of every
one of the least consequence; so that, although but twenty-five, Felix
was already down in two lists, the one, at the palace, of persons whose
views, if not treasonable, were doubtful, and the other, in the hands of
a possible pretender, as a discontented and therefore useful man. Felix
was entirely ignorant that he had attracted so much observation. He
supposed himself simply despised and ignored; he cherished no treason,
had not the slightest sympathy with any pretender, held totally aloof
from intrigue, and his reveries, if they were ambitious, concerned only
himself.

But the most precious of the treasures in the chest were eight or ten
small sheets of parchment, each daintily rolled and fastened with a
ribbon, letters from Aurora Thyma, who had also given him the ivory
cross on the wall. It was of ancient workmanship, a relic of the old
world. A compass, a few small tools (valuable because preserved for so
many years, and not now to be obtained for any consideration), and a
magnifying glass, a relic also of the ancients, completed the contents
of the chest.

Upon a low table by the bedstead were a flint and steel and tinder, and
an earthenware oil lamp, not intended to be carried about. There, too,
lay his knife, with a buckhorn hilt, worn by everyone in the belt, and
his forester's axe, a small tool, but extremely useful in the woods,
without which, indeed, progress was often impossible. These were in the
belt, which, as he undressed, he had cast upon the table, together with
his purse, in which were about a dozen copper coins, not very regular in
shape, and stamped on one side only. The table was formed of two short
hewn planks, scarcely smoothed, raised on similar planks (on edge) at
each end, in fact, a larger form.

From a peg driven into the wall hung a disc of brass by a thin leathern
lace; this disc, polished to the last degree, answered as a mirror. The
only other piece of furniture, if so it could be called, was a block of
wood at the side of the table, used as a chair. In the corner, between
the table and