and some silent, and all looking on him as he went.

When he came to the door of the hall the men that stood there would not
let him in until he entreated them. They told him that the King was now
going to dinner, and that the time was past, so he knew that it was not
yet his hour to give the message that he knew not. But they let him in
at last, and he stood in the crowd to see the King go by.

There was a great company there, and a vast deal of noise, for the
audiences were done, and the bill-men were pushing the folks with their
weapons to make room for the great men to go by, and the heralds were
crying out. Master Richard stood as well as he could, but he was pushed
and trampled about, and he could not see very well. They went by in
great numbers; he saw their hats and caps and their furred shoulders
between the crooked glaives that were gilded to do honour to the King,
but there was such a crying out on all sides that he could not ask which
was the King.

At last the shouting grew loud and then quiet, and men bowed down on all
sides; and he saw the man whom he knew must be the King.

He had a long face (as I saw for myself afterwards), rather sallow, with
a long straight nose and small, full mouth; his eyebrows were black and
arched high, and beneath them his sorrowful eyes looked out on the
people; he was bowing his head courteously as he came. On his head he
wore a black peaked cap of velvet; there was ermine at his collar and a
gold chain lay across his shoulders.

Now this is what Master Richard saw with the eyes of his body, but with
the eyes of his soul he saw something so strange that I know not how to