ow to act--a third advanced with the same measured
steps. 'By appointment I think, sir?' he said, bowing lower than the
others.

'Yes,' I replied sharply, beginning to grow warm, 'by appointment at
noon.'

'M. de Marsac,' he announced in a sing-song tone to those behind him,
'to see the King of Navarre by appointment at noon.' And with a second
bow--while I grew scarlet with mortification he too wheeled gravely
round and returned to the fireplace.

I saw another preparing to advance, but he came too late. Whether my
face of anger and bewilderment was too much for them, or some among
them lacked patience to see the end, a sudden uncontrollable shout of
laughter, in which all the room joined, cut short the farce. God knows
it hurt me: I winced, I looked this way and that, hoping here or there
to find sympathy and help. But it seemed to me that the place rang
with gibes, that every panel framed, however I turned myself, a cruel,
sneering face. One behind me cried 'Old Clothes,' and when I turned
the other hearth whispered the taunt. It added a thousandfold to my
embarrassment that there was in all a certain orderliness, so that while
no one moved, and none, while I looked at them, raised their voices, I
seemed the more singled out, and placed as a butt in the midst.

One face amid the pyramid of countenances which hid the farther
fireplace so burned itself into my recollection in that miserable
moment, that I never thereafter forgot it; a small, delicate woman's
face, belonging to a young girl who stood boldly in front of her
companions. It was a face full of pride, and, as I saw it then, of
scorn--scorn that scarcely deigned to laugh; while the girl's graceful
figure, slight and maidenly, yet perfectly proportioned, seemed instinct
with the same feeling of contemptuous amusement.

The play, which seemed long enough to me, might have lasted longer,
seeing that no one there had pity on me, had I not, in my desperation,
espied a door at the farther end of the room, and concluded, seeing no
other, that it was the door of the king's bedchamber. The mortification
I was suffering was so great that I did not hesitate, but advanced with
boldness towards it. On the instant there was a lull in the laughter
round me, and half a dozen voices called on me to stop.

'I have come to see the king,' I answered, turning on them fiercely, for
I was by this time in no mood for browbeating, 'and I will see him!'

'He is out hunting,' c