'But your toilette, monsieur,' said the Swiss.

'True, I had forgotten it; excuse me for one moment, M. le Suisse, and then I am at your service.'

I hastily removed all traces of my recent adventures and discomforts, arranged my costume as well as its capabilities permitted, and placed upon my left breast the cross of St. Lazare, which I had hitherto carried in a secret pocket: I was then conducted by the Swiss across the quadrangle and up one of the guarded staircases, to the great hall of the palace; the place where feasts were given, ambassadors received, and high festival held.

This hall was a noble apartment of more than one hundred feet in length. I perceived that it was floridly decorated, and that towards the upper end it was crowded by gentlemen in glittering costumes and armed soldiers, for the halberds of the hundred Swiss guards gleamed as their bearers stood ranked along the wall, fifty on each side. Tattered and dusty banners, taken in ancient battles, hung darkly down from the arched roof; and around the wall, on shields of carved stone, were painted all the heraldic bearings of Duke Charles: the three winglets of Lorraine, covered by a ducal mantle, and surmounted by an eagle; burele argent, and gules for Hungary; the fleur-de-lis or, on a barbel gules for Naples; the crosslets of Jerusalem; the four pales gules of Arragon; the fleur-de-lis with a border gules for Anjou; the golden lion of Guelderland, and the black lion of Juliers, with two barbels of Bar-le-Duc.

Under these honours hung the portraits of those dukes of Lorraine who had won them by war or alliance, painted by Jan de Mahuse, by Titian, Rubens, or Poussin. There was grim Godfrey of Ardennes in the chain armour in which he was slain by the Saracens at the battle of Louvain; Gothelo who stormed Verdun from Conrad the Salique; Baldwin, King of Jerusalem and Duke of Lorraine; Duke Theobald II., who fought so valiantly at Spire; Duke Raoul, who was slain at Cressy; Duke Claude, armed cap-a-pie, as he appeared at the passage of the Alps in 1515; his daughter, (the mother of Mary Stuart,) Marie of Lorraine, whose birth-place, the old ducal castle of Bar, had—in memory of her—been spared from sack and fire last winter by the Garde du Corps Ecossais; Anthony Duke of Lorraine and Calabria, who fought the Lutherans and conquered Alsace, a stern warrior sheathed in black armour, and bearing on his left wrist a Scottish falcon, the gift of our monarch James V.; in short, the hall was surrounded by portraits, real or imaginary, of all the thirty-two dukes of the old Merovingian house of Lorraine, and the thirty-third in succession awaited me under a canopy or cloth of estate, seated at a table, which was covered by papers and letters, the usual paraphernalia of a council-board; and as I gazed about me and thought of all the past glories of this ancient line of ducal princes, even the hope that Marie Louise would pity the passion with which she had so wantonly inspired me died away in my aching heart.

The Duke was still attired as I had last seen him in the morning. Pappenheim stood by his chair, eyeing me with dark scrutiny, for he had a keen, penetrating eye and imperious expression of face. De Bitche stood a little in the background in his half armour, as colonel of the petardiers, and under his open helmet I read an expression of undisguised malice in his eye. I had a debt to settle with this worthy personage; but the trick he had played me, and the destruction of my fine horse, were, at that moment, less near my heart than a sense of bitterness at the discovery I had made, and of the humiliation of standing before Charles of Lorraine in the character of a spy.

I looked anxiously round for Vaudemont, but he was not in the hall, neither was his sister, though many ladies of rank were present; and as I approached, with an air of as much firmness and honest dignity as I could assume, the courtiers of the military Duke, the councillors of state, master of requests, keeper of the seals, and others drew near, while the officer of Swiss presented, saying, in a low voice,—

'Monseigneur le Duc, this is the gentleman our prisoner—M. l'Abbé.'

'I am no abbé, M. le Suisse,' said I, bluntly; 'I am Arthur Blane, a Scottish gentleman in the service of king Louis.'

'And none in his garde du corps is more gallant or more true,' said the old Duke, drawing off his long leather glove, and presenting his hand to me; not to kiss, after the absurd fashion of princes, but to press, like a brave, honest man; for this venerable soldier, though usually calm and grave, and lofty without pride, could act act very impulsively at times.