I
Monsieur le Baron D'Inchy took his seat at the head of the principal table; beside him sat his ward, Madame Jacqueline de Broyart, who had M. le Comte de Lalain on her left. Gilles sat some little way down one of the side tables. Outwardly, he was a person of no importance—a stranger, travelling incognito and enjoying for the time being the hospitality of Monseigneur the governor. Maître Jehan, watchful and silent, stood behind his master's chair. The tables had been lavishly and sumptuously laden with good things: a perpetual stream of butlers, pages and varlets had walked in and out of the hall, bringing in dish after dish and placing them upon the boards.
The company sat down amidst much laughter and facetious conversation, and, we take it, every intention of enjoying their host's good cheer. And, of a truth, it was a brilliant assembly, a veritable kaleidoscope of colours, an almost dazzling sparkle of jewels. The dark doublets worn by the men acted as foils to the vivid satins worn by the ladies. The host and his principal guests had high-backed chairs to sit on, but every one else sat on low stools, set very far apart so as to give plenty of room for the display of the ladies' dresses and their monstrous farthingales. Indeed, the men almost disappeared between the billows of satin-covered hoops and the huge lace collars, the points of which would tickle their nose or scratch their ear or even get into their eye.
While the serving-men and wenches went the round of the tables with serviettes over their shoulders and silver ewers and basins in their hands, offering to the guests tepid water perfumed with orange flower, with myrtle, lavender and rosemary, for washing their hands, Gilles de Crohin was watching Jacqueline de Broyart. From where he sat, he could see her dainty head above a forest of silver dish-covers. She had not removed her mask; none of the ladies would do that till, mayhap, after the banquet was over, when conviviality and good cheer would breed closer intimacy. To Gilles' senses, rendered supersensitive by his strangely adventurous position, it seemed as if that piece of black satin, through which he could only perceive from time to time the flash of glowing eyes, rendered Jacqueline's personality both mysterious and desirable. He was conscious of an acute tingling of all his nerves; his own mask felt as if it were weighted with lead; the fumes of rich soups and sauces, mingled with those of wine and heady Flemish ale, appeared to be addling his brain. He felt as if he were in a dream—a dream such as he had never experienced before save once, when, sick, footsore and grievously wounded, he had gone on a brief excursion to Paradise.
Gilles did not know, could not explain it satisfactorily to himself, why the remembrance of a far-off, half-forgotten dream-voice came, with sweet persistency, between him and reality, a voice tender and compassionate, even whilst a pair of eyes, blue as the firmament on an April morning, seemed to be gazing on him through the slits in the mask.