It was a fine morning, sunny, keen, pleasant, when I went out into the street; but I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were where I was going, so that it seemed but a step from my threshold to the Hotel Richelieu; I was no sooner gone from the one than I found myself at the other. Now, as on a memorable evening when I had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way with foreboding, there were two or three guards, in the Cardinal’s livery, loitering in front of the great gates. Coming nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the Louvre thronged with people, not moving about their business, but standing all silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of persons who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with their eyes.
And certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where, some mornings, when the Court was in Paris, I had seen a score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer on guard, twirling his moustachios, looked at me in wonder as I passed him; the lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the stairs and came to the door of the ante-chamber outdid all. The man on guard would have opened the door, but when I went to enter, a major-domo who was standing by, muttering with two or three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.
‘Your business, Monsieur, if you please?’ he said inquisitively; while I wondered why he and the others looked at me so strangely.
‘I am M. de Berault,’ I answered sharply. ‘I have the entree.’
He bowed politely enough.
‘Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,’ he said. ‘But—pardon me. Have you business with his Eminence?’
‘I have the common business,’ I answered sharply. ‘By which many of us live, sirrah! To wait on him.’
‘But—by appointment, Monsieur?’
‘No,’ I said, astonished. ‘It is the usual hour. For the matter of that, however, I have business with him.’
The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment. Then he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed in, uncovering; with an assured face and steadfast mien, ready to meet all eyes. In a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.