amber
richly tapestried in fawn-colored Flanders leather, stamped with golden
foliage. The beams, which cut the ceiling in parallel lines, diverted
the eye with a thousand eccentric painted and gilded carvings. Splendid
enamels gleamed here and there on carved chests; a boar's head in
faience crowned a magnificent dresser, whose two shelves announced that
the mistress of the house was the wife or widow of a knight banneret. At
the end of the room, by the side of a lofty chimney blazoned with
arms from top to bottom, in a rich red velvet arm-chair, sat Dame de
Gondelaurier, whose five and fifty years were written upon her garments
no less distinctly than upon her face.

Beside her stood a young man of imposing mien, although partaking
somewhat of vanity and bravado--one of those handsome fellows whom all
women agree to admire, although grave men learned in physiognomy shrug
their shoulders at them. This young man wore the garb of a captain of
the king's unattached archers, which bears far too much resemblance to
the costume of Jupiter, which the reader has already been enabled to
admire in the first book of this history, for us to inflict upon him a
second description.

The damoiselles were seated, a part in the chamber, a part in the
balcony, some on square cushions of Utrecht velvet with golden corners,
others on stools of oak carved in flowers and figures. Each of them held
on her knee a section of a great needlework tapestry, on which they
were working in company, while one end of it lay upon the rush mat which
covered the floor.

They were chatting together in that whispering tone and with the
half-stifled laughs peculiar to an assembly of young girls in whose
midst there is a young man. The young man whose presence served to set
in play all these feminine self-conceits, appeared to pay very little
heed to the matter, and, while these pretty damsels were vying with one
another to attract his attention, he seemed to be chiefly absorbed in
polishing the buckle of his sword belt with his doeskin glove. From time
to time, the old lady addressed him in a very low tone, and he
replied as well as he was able, with a sort of awkward and constrained
politeness.

From the smiles and significant gestures of Dame Aloise, from the
glances which she threw towards her daughter, Fleur-de-Lys, as she spoke
low to the captain, it was easy to see that there was here a question of
some betrothal concluded, some marriage near at ha