Let me remind you that I would be gone." The reminder was well-timed.

He bethought him of the journey I must go, on which he was charged to see me safely started.
"Come on, then," he growled, in a white heat of passion that was only curbed by the consideration of that slender, pale young cardinal, his master.
Still, some of his rage he vented in roughly taking me by the collar of my doublet, and dragging the almost headlong from the room, and so a-down a flight of steps out into the courtyard.

Meet treatment for a Fool--a treatment to which time might have inured me; for had I not for three years already been exposed to rough usage of this kind at the hands of every man above the rank of groom?
And had I once rebelled in act as I did in soul, and used the strength wherewith God endowed me to punish my ill-users, a whip would have reminded me into what sorry slavery had I sold myself when I put on the motley.
It had been snowing for the past hour, and the ground was white in the courtyard when we descended.
At our appearance there was a movement of serving-men and a fall of hoofs, muffled by the snow.

Some held torches that cast a ruddy glare upon the all-encompassing whiteness, and a groom was leading forward the horse that was destined to bear me.

I donned my broad-brimmed hat, and wrapped my cloak about me.