He turned to the group behind him, and said, in a peculiarly even, placid tone, ‘He wishes to see the King of Navarre.’ Then in solemn silence he bowed to me again and went back to his fellows. Upon the instant, and before I could make up my mind how to take this, a second tripped forward, and saluting me, said, ‘M. de Marsac, I think?’ ‘At your service, sir,’ I rejoined. In my eagerness to escape the gaze of all those eyes, and the tittering which was audible behind me, I took a step forward to be in readiness to follow him. But he gave no sign. ‘M. de Marsac to see the King of Navarre’ was all he said, speaking as the other had close to those behind. And with that he too wheeled round and went back to the fire. I stared, a first faint suspicion of the truth aroused in my mind. Before I could act upon it, however--in such a situation it was no easy task to decide how to act--a third advanced with the same measured steps. ‘By appointment I think, sir?’ he said, bowing lower than the others. ‘Yes,’ I replied sharply, beginning to grow warm, ‘by appointment at noon.’ ‘M. de Marsac,’ he announced in a sing-song tone to those behind him, ‘to see the King of Navarre by appointment at noon.’ And with a second bow--while I grew scarlet with mortification he too wheeled gravely round and returned to the fireplace. I saw another preparing to advance, but he came too late. Whether my face of anger and bewilderment was too much for them, or some among them lacked patience to see the end, a sudden uncontrollable shout of laughter, in which all the room joined, cut short the farce. God knows it hurt me: I winced, I looked this way and that, hoping here or there to find sympathy and help. But it seemed to me that the place rang with gibes, that every panel framed, however I turned myself, a cruel, sneering face. One behind me cried ‘Old Clothes,’ and when I turned the other hearth whispered the taunt. It added a thousandfold to my embarrassment that there was in all a certain orderliness, so that while no one moved, and none, while I looked at them, raised their voices, I seemed the more singled out, and placed as a butt in the midst. One face amid the pyramid of countenances which hid the farther fireplace so burned itself into my recollection in that miserable moment, that I never thereafter forgot it; a small, delicate woman’s face, belonging to a young girl who stood boldly in front of her companions. It was a face full of pride, and, as I saw it then, of scorn--scorn that scarcely deigned to laugh; while the girl’s graceful figure, slight and maidenly, yet perfectly proportioned, seemed instinct with the same feeling of contemptuous amusement.