whom Madame familiarly gave her arm; and both walked
chatting away, like two old friends.

Behind these two couples filed nobles, ladies, pages and
officers; the flambeaux gleamed over the whole court, like
the moving reflections of a conflagration. Then the noise of
steps and voices became lost in the upper floors of the
castle.

No one was then thinking of the king, who, leaning on his
elbow at his window, had sadly seen pass away all that
light, and heard that noise die off -- no, not one, if it
was not that unknown of the hostelry des Medici, whom we
have seen go out, enveloped in his cloak.

He had come straight up to the castle, and had, with his
melancholy countenance, wandered round and round the palace,
from which the people had not yet departed; and finding that
no one guarded the great entrance, or the porch, seeing that
the soldiers of Monsieur were fraternizing with the royal
soldiers -- that is to say swallowing Beaugency at
discretion, or rather indiscretion -- the unknown penetrated
through the crowd, then ascended to the court, and came to
the landing of the staircase leading to the cardinal's
apartment.

What, according to all probability, induced him to direct
his steps that way, was the splendor of the flambeaux, and
the busy air of the pages and domestics. But he was stopped
short by a presented musket and the cry of the sentinel.