His eminence crossed the court, conducted by Monsieur, who himself held a
flambeau; then followed the queen-mother, to 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 on 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.

"Where are you going, my friend?" asked the soldier.