by Pavillon and his lieutenant, and followed by a dozen of the
Kurschenschaft, or skinner's trade, who attended as a guard of honour on
the Syndic.

As they approached the hall, the yells of acclamation and bursts of wild
laughter which proceeded from it, seemed rather to announce the revel of
festive demons, rejoicing after some accomplished triumph over the
human race, than of mortal beings who had succeeded in a bold design.
An emphatic tone of mind, which despair alone could have inspired,
supported the assumed courage of the Countess Isabelle, undaunted
spirits, which rose with the extremity, maintained that of Durward,
while Pavillon and his lieutenant made a virtue of necessity, and faced
their fate like bears bound to a stake, which must necessarily stand the
dangers of the course.

CHAPTER XXII: THE REVELLERS

Cade.--Where's Dick, the butcher of Ashford?
Dick.--Here, sir.
Cade.--They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou
behavedst thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughter
house.

SECOND PART OF KING HENRY V.

There could hardly exist a more strange and horrible change than had
taken place in the castle hall of Schonwaldt since Quentin had partaken
of the noontide meal there, and it was indeed one which painted, in
the extremity of their dreadful features, the miseries of war--more
especially when waged by those most relentless of all agents, the
mercenary soldiers of a barbarous age--men who, by habit and profession,
had become familiarized with all that was cruel and bloody in the art
of war, while they were devoid alike of patriotism and of the romantic
spirit of chivalry.

Instead of the orderly, decent, and somewhat formal meal, at which civil
and ecclesiastical officers had, a few hours before, sat mingled in the
same apartment, where a light jest could only be uttered in a whisper,
and where, even amid superfluity of feasting and of wine, there reigned
a decorum which almost amounted to hypocrisy, there was now such a scene
of wild and roaring debauchery as Satan himself, had he taken the chair
as founder of the feast, could scarcely have improved.

At the head of the table sat, in the Bishop's throne and state, which
had been hastily brought thither from his great council chamber, the
redoubted Boar of Ardennes himself, well deserving that dreaded name in
which he affected to delight, and which he did as much as he could think
of to deserv