The King's Esquires; Or, The Jewel of France

His Most Christian Majesty King Francis the First had a great preference for his Palace of Fontainebleau among the many places of residence from which he could choose, and it is interesting to glance into that magnificent palace on a certain afternoon in the year 151—. In a special apartment, from which direct access could be obtained to the guard chamber, where a detachment of the favourite musketeers of the King of France was on duty, and which also communicated with the monarch’s private apartments, a youth, nearly a man but not quite was impatiently striding up and down. He stopped every now and then to glance out of the low window, from which a view could be obtained over the great Forest of Fontainebleau, where Philip Augustus in the old days, centuries before, loved to go hunting. It seemed as though to the young man there was a chafing disquietude in the silence, the inaction, of the afternoon, when the inmates of the palace, like the inhabitants of the tiny little white town, retired to rest for a time in order to be ready for the evening, when life began to be lived once more.
It was a very handsome chamber in which the young man was evidencing a species of disquietude, as of awaiting the coming of somebody, or a summons. As he stopped once in his feverish pacing up and down, a massive clock was heard to strike three. Rich mats lay on the polished floor, and the salon was so lofty that high-up it seemed almost grey dusk by contrast with the bars of sunshine which came through the window.
From outside there came the challenging clarion note of a trumpet.
“Changing guard,” he muttered, “already!” And then he fell to thinking of other things, for there was beneath the thud of horses’ feet, the baying of a dog and a loud shout.
He turned away from the window at last and tapped the dark arras with which the walls were draped.
He was a tall, dark-eyed, well-made lad, looking handsome enough in his rich velvet doublet, evidently one who spent a large part of his time in the open air, in the chase, or perhaps in sterner work still.