"Have you the two valises, with the one change of clothing?"
"They are here."
"And have you the fifty louis, as I stated?"
"Here in the purse."
"And I think you have also the single diamond."
"It is here."
"Then," said Law, "let us go."
He rose, and scarce looking behind him, even to see that his orders to the servant had been obeyed, he strode down the vast stairway of the great hôtel, past many precious works of art, between walls hung with richest tapestries and noble paintings. The click of his heel on a chance bit of exposed marble here and there echoed hollow, as though indeed the master of the palace had been abandoned by all his people. The great building was silent, empty.
"What! Are you, then, here?" he said, seeing the servant had disobeyed his instructions and was following close behind him. He alone out of those scores of servants, those hundreds of fawning nobles, those thousands of sycophant souls who had but lately cringed before him, now accompanied the late master of France as he turned to leave the house in which he no longer held authority.
Without, but the door's thickness from where he stood, there arose a tumult of sound, shouts, cries, imprecations, entreaties, as though the walls of some asylum for the unfortunate had broken away and allowed its inmates to escape unrestrained, irreclaimable, impossible to control.