"It's on account of the Princess Gabrielle."
"They say the duke is furious."
"Not astonishing. But—a marriage! How can there be a marriage?"
Yet it looked as if a marriage there would be. Manifestly, the hall had been prepared for some such event.
It was a chamber long, lofty and broad, walled and floored with the native Burgundy rock, richly carpeted, hung with tapestry. And down a portion of the length of this ran a wide table already spread with the viands of a wedding-feast—huge cold pasties, hams and boarheads beautifully jellied, fresh and candied fruits from Spain and Sicily, flagons and goblets of crystal, silver, and gold.
What aroused curiosity and conjecture to the highest point, however, was the discovery that the immense fireplace of the hall had been transformed into a forge. It was a forge complete—bellows and hearth, anvil and tub, hammers and tongs. There was even a smutty-faced imp there to tend the forge fire, which already hissed and glowed as he worked the bellows.
"Aha! So there was a smith mixed up in the affair, after all!"
"Mais oui! Gaspard, the smith, whose forge is down there on the banks of the Rhone."
"But what does the duke intend to do?"
It was a question which more than one was asking. There was never any forecasting what a whim of the duke might lead him to do even in ordinary circumstances—declare war on France, call a new Crusade. And now, with this menace of scandal in his family!