at this present affair was going to
be queerer yet.

The old duke always had been a worthy descendant of his ancestors; like
them, a little mad, with flashes of genius, very fine, very brutal, a
murderer at heart, with a love for poetry and philosophic speculation.

The guests were already in a smiling tremor of curiosity when they
arrived. Some of them whispered among themselves:

"It's on account of the Princess Gabrielle."

"They say the duke is furious."

"Not astonishing. But--a marriage! How can there be a marriage?"

Yet it looked as if a marriage there would be. Manifestly, the hall had
been prepared for some such event.

It was a chamber long, lofty and broad, walled and floored with the
native Burgundy rock, richly carpeted, hung with tapestry. And down a
portion of the length of this ran a wide table already spread with the
viands of a wedding-feast--huge cold pasties, hams and boarheads
beautifully jellied, fresh and candied fruits from Spain and Sicily,
flagons and goblets of crystal, silver, and gold.

What aroused curiosity and conjecture to the highest point, however, was
the discovery that the immense fireplace of the hall had been
transformed into a forge. It was a forge complete--bellows and hearth,
anvil and tub, hammers and tongs. There was even a smutty-faced imp
there to tend the forge fire, which already hissed and glowed as he
worked the bellows.

"Aha! So there _was_ a smith mixed up in the affair, after all!"

"_Mais oui!_ Gaspard, the smith, whose forge is down there on the banks
of the Rhone."

"But what does the duke intend to do?"

It was a question which more than one was asking. There was never any
forecasting what a whim of the duke might lead him to do even in
ordinary circumstances--declare war on France, call a new Crusade. And
now, with this menace of scandal in his family!

There in front of the fireplace where the forge had been set up, the
valets had placed the ducal chair. All the same, the arrangements had
something sinister about them. There fell a period of silence touched
with panic. But not for long. Curiosity was too acute and powerful to be
long suppressed. The whispering resumed:

"The duke surprised them together--the princess and her smith."

"It looks like the torture for one or both."

"They say the fellow's an Apollo, a Hercules."

"You wait until the duke--"

"Silence! He comes."

One of the large doors toward the farther end of the hall was