A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled with choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that of the courtyard in front.  A grape-vine draped its walls.  In the centre of a grass plot rose a silver fir-tree.  The flower-borders were separated from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of clipped yews at the farther end of the little garden.  The walls were covered with a mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design, it is true, but pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with those of the flower-beds.  The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the middle windows.  On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern.  The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the stone with precious marbles.

In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there was an air of melancholy about it.  It was darkened by the buildings that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d’Alencon which threw a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence reigned there.  But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude, soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home wherein they love.

It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and give himself up to the poesy he loved,—­pleasures denied him by the cares of a cruel royalty.  Here, alone, were his great soul and his high intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up, for a few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of fatherhood, —­pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.

In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory, which was the boudoir of those days.  She was arranging the long curls of her beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new coif, and gazing intently into her mirror.

“It is nearly four o’clock; that interminable council must surely be over,” she thought to herself.  “Jacob has returned from the Louvre; he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the councillors summoned and the length of the session.  What can have happened?  Is it some misfortune?  Good God! surely he knows how suspense wears out the soul!  Perhaps he has gone a-hunting?  If he is happy and amused, it is all right.  When I see him gay, I forget all I have suffered.”

She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the couch behind her.  The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps that he had slipped in softly without being heard.