CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE KING'S CABINET.
On the night upon which such strange chances had befallen his messengers, the king sat alone in his cabinet.

Over his head a perfumed lamp, held up by four little flying Cupids of crystal, who dangled by golden chains from the painted ceiling, cast a brilliant light upon the chamber, which was flashed back twenty-fold by the mirrors upon the wall.

The ebony and silver furniture, the dainty carpet of La Savonniere, the silks of Tours, the tapestries of the Gobelins, the gold-work and the delicate chinaware of Sevres--the best of all that France could produce was centred between these four walls.

Nothing had ever passed through that door which was not a masterpiece of its kind.
And amid all this brilliance the master of it sat, his chin resting upon his hands, his elbows upon the table, with eyes which stared vacantly at the wall, a moody and a solemn man.
But though his dark eyes were fixed upon the wall, they saw nothing of it.

They looked rather down the long vista of his own life, away to those early years when what we dream and what we do shade so mistily into one another.