There in front of the fireplace where the forge had been set up, the valets had placed the ducal chair. All the same, the arrangements had something sinister about them. There fell a period of silence touched with panic. But not for long. Curiosity was too acute and powerful to be long suppressed. The whispering resumed:
"The duke surprised them together—the princess and her smith."
"It looks like the torture for one or both."
"They say the fellow's an Apollo, a Hercules."
"You wait until the duke—"
"Silence! He comes."
One of the large doors toward the farther end of the hall was thrown open, and through this there came a surge of music—hautboys, viols, and flutes. Two guardsmen came in, helmeted, swords drawn, and took up their stations at either side of the door.
There entered the duke.
He looked the philosopher, perhaps, if not the student—tall, bent, bony; a brush of white hair bristling over the top of his high and narrow head; a fleshless face, sardonic and humorous. The guests were pleased to see that his mood was amiable. He came forward smiling, waved his musicians into retreat; and half a dozen valets were assisting him into his chair as he greeted his guests. They all bent the knee to him. Some kissed his hand—and some he kissed, especially those who were fair and of the opposite sex.
If Princess Gabrielle had shown herself fragile in the matter of her affections, well, she had come by her failing honestly.