e so strangely.

'I am M. de Berault,' I answered sharply. 'I have the entree.'

He bowed politely enough.

'Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,' he said.
'But--pardon me. Have you business with his Eminence?'

'I have the common business,' I answered sharply. 'By which many of us
live, sirrah! To wait on him.'

'But--by appointment, Monsieur?'

'No,' I said, astonished. 'It is the usual hour. For the matter of that,
however, I have business with him.'

The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment. Then
he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed
in, uncovering; with an assured face and steadfast mien, ready to meet
all eyes. In a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.

The room was empty.

CHAPTER XV. ST MARTIN'S SUMMER

Yes, at the great Cardinal's levee I was the only client! I stared round
the room, a long, narrow gallery, through which it was his custom to
walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I
stared, I say, from side to side, in a state of stupefaction. The seats
against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty
too. The hat sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the
blazoned arms looked down on a vacant floor. Only on a little stool by
the farther door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended
to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind,
deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.

Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought--for I had
seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so crowded that he could
not walk through it--this man closed his book, rose and came noiselessly
towards me.

'M. de Berault?' he said.

'Yes,' I answered.

'His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me.'

I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal
know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order?
But I had short time to think of these things, or others. We passed
through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing, we
stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt.
The usher knocked, opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside
a curtain and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind a
screen.

'Is that M. de Berault?' asked a thin, high-pitched voice.

'Yes, Monseigneur,' I answered t