“What mean you, Baldwin?”

“Nay, have you not heard that in England they are beginning to build along the end of the rooms, lodges or troughs to contain the fuel, on the base of which they raise a brick funnel, through which all the smoke mounts and so evaporates at the top of the house?” replied Baldwin.

“Think you then, d’Avesnes, that the whole room can be warmed with the fire at one end of it, particularly if the smoke be carried out?”

“Indeed they say,” replied d’Avesnes, “it casts a strong heat everywhere.”

["The Black Lady” is thus characterised:—­“They speak of her as one entirely destitute of natural sensibility; they hint at some dark practices, and they designate her so frequently by the epithet of the ‘Black Lady,’ that many, both in Hainault and Flanders, are ignorant that this is not really her title.”  Here follows a whole-length portrait of this specimen of black-letter majesty.]

In the tapestried room into which the brothers were conducted, sat the Black Lady of Brabant on a throne elevated considerably above the floor.  The dais was covered with the same rich tapestry as the hangings which covered the walls, for even in this early age Bruges was celebrated for such manufactures.  The draperies of the throne were of purple velvet fringed with gold, with a canopy and curtains of the same rich materials, the latter being looped back with a massive cord and tassels.  The constable supported one side of the throne, and the seneschal the other.  Below these were the cup-bearer and grand huntsman.  Six pages were placed about the steps of the throne, and the same number of ladies in waiting were also there.  Yet Marguerite herself wanted not the surrounding magnificence to mark her superior dignity of “Countess by the grace of God,” then accorded to only one county besides her own; for there was a sort of fearful majesty about her towering height, unbowed either by the weight of years (and she had already passed what the Psalmist has declared to be the age of man) or luxurious indulgence.  Her face was pale and marked by deep furrows, indicating an unlimited indulgence of the strong passions which had rendered her life so unquiet.  Her eye was black, and retained all the fire of lively feeling, yet it was sunken.  Her forehead was low, yet there was an inflexibility of resolve in its deep lines that added much to the majestic character of her appearance.  Her teeth too were perfect, and her thin and colourless lips left them visible to attract the painful admiration excited by their contrast with the unlovely expression of her features; her chin was small.  Her hair was all drawn from her face to the crown of her head and concealed under the black lace veil, which concealing the upper part of her forehead, fell over each shoulder even to her feet.  Her upper garment was a long mantle of black velvet lined with ermine, which, opening in front, fell over the arms of her throne, and discovered a dress of