68.] The great hall was crowded.

As at every audience given by the King the room was close with the breath of the assembled multitude.

The vast chamber presented that aspect of a market-house or of a rout which was so familiar to courtiers.

It was evening; fifty torches flamed beneath the painted beams of the roof.[662] Men of middle age in robes and furs, young, smooth-faced nobles, thin and narrow shouldered, of slender build, their lean legs in tight hose, their feet in long, pointed shoes; barons fully armed to the number of three hundred, according to Aulic custom, pushed, crowded and elbowed each other while the usher was here and there striking the courtiers on the head with his rod.[663] [Footnote 662: _Trial_, vol.i, pp.

75, 141.] [Footnote 663: Le Curial, in _Les oeuvres de Maistre Alain Chartier_, ed.