refectory, preceded by a page and the two maitres d'hotel.

Wherever the viande passed, the soldiers ported arms.

Mademoiselle de Montalais and her companion had watched from
their window the details of this ceremony, to which, by the
bye, they must have been pretty well accustomed. But they
did not look so much from curiosity as to be assured they
should not be disturbed. So guards, scullions, maitres
d'hotel, and pages having passed, they resumed their places
at the table; and the sun, which, through the window-frame,
had for an instant fallen upon those two charming
countenances, now only shed its light upon the gilliflowers,
primroses, and rosetree.

"Bah!" said Mademoiselle de Montalais, taking her place
again; "Madame will breakfast very well without me!"

"Oh! Montalais, you will be punished!" replied the other
girl, sitting down quietly in hers.

"Punished, indeed! -- that is to say, deprived of a ride!
That is just the way in which I wish to be punished. To go
out in the grand coach, perched upon a doorstep; to turn to
the left, twist round to the right, over roads full of ruts,
where we cannot exceed a league in two hours; and then to
come back straight towards the wing of the castle in which
is the window of Mary de Medici, so that Madame never fails
to say: `Could one believe it possible that Mary de Medici
should have escaped from that window -- forty-seven feet