"Ah, that youth, that youth," cried the maître d'hôtel, with a strong foreign accent. "He will get himself into trouble, and Heaven knows the trouble he has given me. But can not you, good Monsieur Blaize, just show the young gentleman his apartments? Here are the keys. I know it is not in your office; but I am so busy just now, and so sad too, that you would confer a favor upon me. Then bring him back, as soon as he knows his way, and we three will dine snugly together in my other room. It is two hours past the time; but every thing has been in disorder this black day, and the duke has gone out without any dinner at all. Will you favor me, Monsieur Blaize?"
"With pleasure, with pleasure, my good friend," replied the old écuyer, taking the two keys which the other held out to him, and saying, in an inquiring tone, "The two rooms next to the duke's bed-room, are they not?"
"No, no. The two on this side, next the toilet-chamber," answered the other. "You will find a fire lighted there, for it is marvelous cold in this horrid climate;" and Monsieur Blaize, nodding his head, led the way toward another part of the palace.
Innumerable small chambers were passed, their little doors jostling each other in a long corridor, and Jean Charost began to wonder when they would stop, when a sharp turn brought them to a completely different part of the house. A large and curiously-constructed stair-case presented itself, rising from the sides of a vestibule, in two great wings, which seemed all the way up as if they were going to meet each other at the next landing-place, but yet, taking a sudden turn, continued separate to the top of the five stories through which they ascended, without any communication whatsoever between the several flights. Quaint and strange were the ornaments carved upon the railings and balustrades: heads of devils and angels, cherubims with their wings extended, monkeys playing on the fiddle, dragons with their snaky tails wound round the bones of a grinning skeleton, and Cupid astride upon a goose. In each little group there was probably some allegory, moral or satirical; but, though very much inclined, Jean Charost could not pause to inquire into the conceit which lay beneath, for his companion led the way up one of the flights with a rapid step, and then carried him along a wide passage, in which the doors were few and large, and ornamented with rich carvings, but dimly seen in the ill-lighted corridor. At the end, a little flight of six broad steps led them to another floor of the house, more lightsome and cheerful of aspect, and here they reached a large doorway, with a lantern hanging before it and some verses carved in the wood-work upon the cornice.
Here Monsieur Blaize paused for a moment to look over his shoulder, and say, "That is the duke's bed-chamber, and the door beyond his toilet-chamber, where he receives applicants while he is dressing; and now for the secretary's room."
As he spoke, he approached a little door--for no great symmetry was observed--and, applying a key to the lock, admitted his young companion into the apartments which were to be his future abode. The first room was a sort of antechamber to the second, and was fitted up as a sort of writing-chamber, with tables, and chairs, and stools, ink-bottles and cases for paper, while a large, open fire-place displayed the embers of a fire, which had been sufficiently large to warm the whole air within. Within this room wat another, separated from it by a partition of plain oak, containing a small bed, very handsomely decorated, a chair, and a table, but no other furniture, except three pieces of tapestry, representing, somewhat grotesquely, and not very decently, the loves of Jupiter and Leda. The two chambers, which formed one angle of the building, and received light from two different sides, had apparently been one in former times, but each was large enough to form a very convenient room; and there was an air of comfort and habitability, if I may use the term, which seemed to the eye of Jean Charost the first cheerful thing he had met with since his entrance into the palace.
On the table, in the writing-room, were spots of ink of no very old date; and one article, belonging to a former tenant had been left behind, in the shape of a sword hanging by one of the rings of the scabbard from a nail driven into the oaken partition. In passing through, Jean Charost paused to look at it, and the old écuyer exclaimed, "Ah, poor fellow! he will never use it again. That belonged to Monsieur De Gray, the duke's late secretary, who was killed in a rencounter near Corbeil. Master Juvenel de Royans thought to get the post, but he had so completely lost the duke's favor by his rashness and indiscretion, that it was flatly refused him.
"Then probably he will be no great friend of mine," said Jean Charost, with a faint smile; "and perhaps his conduct just now had as much of malice in it as of folly."
Monsieur Blaize paused and meditated for a moment. He was at that age when the light tricks and vagaries of sportive youth are the most annoying--not old enough to dote upon the reflected image of regretted years, nor young enough to feel any sympathy with the follies of another age. He was, nevertheless, a very just man, and, as Jean Charost found afterward, just in small things as well as great; in words as well as deeds.
"No," he said, thoughtfully; "no; I do not think he is one to bear malice--at all events, not long. His nature is a frank and generous one, though overlaid by much conceit and vanity, and carried away by a rash, unbridled spirit. It is probable he neither cared who or what you were, and merely resolved, in order to make the foolish boys round him laugh, that he would have what he called some sport with the stranger, without at all considering how much pain he might give, or where an idle jest might end. There are multitudes of such men in the world, and they gain, good lack! the reputation of gallant, daring spirits, simply because they put themselves and every one else in danger, as if the continual periling of a hard head were really any sign of being a brave man. But we must not keep the signor's dinner waiting. It is one of his little foibles to love his meat well done, and never drink bad wine. Your eyes seem seeking something. What is it you require?"
"I thought, perhaps," replied Jean Charost, "that my baggage might have been brought up here, as the apartment, it seems, was prepared for me. It must have come some time ago, I think. My horse, too, I left at the gates, and Heaven knows what has become of him."
"We will inquire--we will inquire as we go," said the écuyer; "but no great toilet is required here at the dinner hour. At supper we sometimes put on our smart attire; but, in these hazardous times, one never knows how, or how soon, the mid-day meal may be brought to an end."
Thus saying, he turned to the door, and, taking a different way back from that which he had followed in leading Jean Charost to his apartments, he paused for a moment at a little dark den, shut off from one of the lower halls by a half door, breast high, and spoke a few words to some invisible person within.
"Stall number nineteen," growled a voice from within. "But who's to dress him? No groom--no horse-boy, even!"
"We will see to that presently," replied the écuyer; and then seeing a man pass along the other side of the hall, he crossed over, spoke to him for a moment or two, and returning, informed Jean Charost that his baggage had arrived, and would be carried up to the door of his apartments before dinner was over.
On returning to the rooms of the maître d'hôtel, they found that high functionary emerged from his accounts, and ready to conduct them into his own private dining-room, where, by especial privilege, he took his meals with a select few, and certainly did not fare worse than his lord and master. There might be more gold on the table of the Duke of Orleans, but probably less good cheer. The maître d'hôtel himself was a sleek, quiet specimen of Italian humanity, always exceedingly full of business, very accurate, and even very faithful; by birth a gentleman; nominally an ecclesiastic; fond of quiet, if not of ease, and loving all kinds of good things, without the slightest objection to a sly joke, even if the whiskers of decency, morality, or religion were a little singed thereby. He was an exceedingly good man, nevertheless, a hater of all strife and quarreling, though in this respect he had fallen upon evil days; and his appearance and conduct, with his black beard, his tonsure, his semi-clerical dress, and his air of grave suavity, generally assured him respect from all members of the duke's household.
Two other officers, besides himself and the écuyer, formed the party at dinner with Jean Charost, and every