is very kind----" he began.

"Not a word more! If you will follow me and wait an instant at
the entrance, I will speak with His Majesty and bring you in."

"I have not my ferraiuola---" began Monsignor.

"The King will excuse travellers," smiled the Frenchman.

The entrance to the "King's Garden" on this side passes beneath an
arch of yew, and here the two waited.

Somewhere beyond the green walls they could hear talking, and now
and again a burst of laughter. Then the talking ceased, and they
heard a single voice.

"In what language----" began Monsignor Masterman nervously.

"Oh! English, no doubt. You can't talk French?"

Monsignor shook his head.

"Not a hundred words," he said.

Again came the quick footstep, and the French priest appeared,
still gay, but with a certain solemnity. "Come this way,
gentlemen," he said. "The King will see you." (He glanced at the
prelate.) "You won't forget to kneel, Monsignor."

To the English prelate the scene that he saw, on emerging at last
into the open space in the middle, protected by the ancient
yews--even though he should have been prepared for it by all that
he had already seen--simply once more dazed and stupefied him.

The centre of the space was occupied by a round pond, perhaps
thirty yards across, of absolutely still water, and in this
mirror, shaded by the masses of foliage overhead, was reflected a
picture that might have been taken straight from some painting
two hundred years old. For, on the semicircle of marble seats
that stood beyond the water, sat a company of figures dressed
once more in all the bravery of real colour and splendour, as
from days when men were not ashamed to use publicly and commonly
these glittering gifts of God.

Monsignor hardly noticed the rest (there were perhaps twelve or
fifteen all told, with half a dozen women amongst them); he
looked only, as he came round the pond, at the central figure
that advanced to meet him. Twice he had seen him yesterday--yet
those occasions had been public. But to see the King now, at ease
amongst his friends, yet still royally dressed in his brilliant
blue suit and feathered hat, with his tall cane--to see the whole
company, gay and brilliant, talking and laughing, taking their
pleasure in the air before breakfast--the whole thing somehow
brought home to him the reality of what appeared to him as a
change, more than had all the pomps and glories of the day
before. Splendour no longer seemed c