’In the oeil-de-boeuf, between the King’s and Queen’s suites of rooms.  I must go.  There is the Queen going.  Diane, one loving word.’

‘Silly child, you shall have plenty another time,’ said Diane, breaking away.  ‘Follow thy Queen now!’

Catherine, who sat between her daughters Claude and Marguerite, looked pre-occupied, and summarily dismissed her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, whom Eustacie was obliged to follow to her own state-room.  There all the forms of the COUCHER were tediously gone through; every pin had its own ceremony, and even when her Majesty was safely deposited under her blue satin coverlet the ladies still stood round till she felt disposed to fall asleep.  Elisabeth was both a sleepy and a considerate person, so that this was not so protracted a vigil as was sometimes exacted by the more wakeful princesses; but Eustacie could not escape from it till it was already almost midnight, the period for her tryst.

Her heart was very full.  It was not the usual flutter and terror of an eloping girl.  Eustacie was a fearless little being, and her conscience had no alarms; her affections were wholly with Berenger, and her transient glimpses of him had been as of something come out of a region higher, tenderer, stronger, purer, more trustworthy than that where she had dwelt.  She was proud of belonging to him.  She had felt upheld by the consciousness through years of waiting, and now he more than realized her hopes, and she could have wept for exulting joy.  Yet it was a strange, stealthy break with all she had to leave behind.  The light to which he belonged seemed strange, chill, dazzling light, and she shivered at the thought of it, as if the new world, new ideas, and new requirements could only be endured with him to shield her and help her on.  And withal, there seemed to her a shudder over the whole place on that night.  The King’s eyes looked wild and startled, the Queen-mother’s calm was strained, the Duchess of Lorraine was evidently in a state of strong nervous excitement; there were strange sounds, strange people moving about, a weight on everything, as if they were under the shadow of a thunder-cloud.  ‘Could it be only her own fancy?’ she said to herself, because this was to be the great event of her life, for surely all these great people could not know or heed that little Eustacie de Ribaumont was to make her escape that night!

The trains of royalty were not sumptuously lodged.  France never has cared so much for comfort as for display.  The waiting-lady of the bedchamber slept in the ante-room of her mistress; the others, however high their rank, were closely herded together up a winding stair leading to a small passage, with tiny, cell-like recesses, wherein the demoiselles slept, often with their maids, and then dressed themselves in the space afforded by the passage.  Eustacie’s cell was nearly at the end of the gallery, and exchanging ‘good-nights’ with her companions, she