been awaiting him, and was fain to proceed to the work of issuing the
orders connected with his post, or to receive respects, communications,
solicitations, presentations, recommendations, embraces--to observe that
infinitude of relations which surround a favorite, and which require
constant and sustained attention, for any absence of mind might cause
great misfortunes. He thus almost forgot the trifling circumstance which
had made him uneasy, and which he thought might after all have only been
a freak of the imagination. Giving himself up to the sweets of a kind of
continual apotheosis, he mounted his horse in the great courtyard,
attended by noble pages, and surrounded by brilliant gentlemen.

Monsieur soon arrived, followed by his people; and in an hour the King
appeared, pale, languishing, and supported by four men. Cinq-Mars,
dismounting, assisted him into a kind of small and very low carriage,
called a brouette, and the horses of which, very docile and quiet ones,
the King himself drove. The prickers on foot at the doors held the dogs
in leash; and at the sound of the horn scores of young nobles mounted,
and all set out to the place of meeting.

It was a farm called L'Ormage that the King had fixed upon; and the
court, accustomed to his ways, followed the many roads of the park, while
the King slowly followed an isolated path, having at his side the grand
ecuyer and four persons whom he had signed to approach him.

The aspect of this pleasure party was sinister. The approach of winter
had stripped well-nigh all the leaves from the great oaks in the park,
whose dark branches now stood up against a gray sky, like branches of
funereal candelabra. A light fog seemed to indicate rain; through the
melancholy boughs of the thinned wood the heavy carriages of the court
were seen slowly passing on, filled with women, uniformly dressed in