The two deadly enemies, Anne and Diane, were seated at the opposite ends of the room, but, notwithstanding the distance between them, not five seconds elapsed before every stinging quip uttered by one of them found its way to the ears of the other, and the retort, forwarded by the same couriers, returned as quickly by the same road. Amid all these silk and velvet-clad noblemen, in an atmosphere of clever sayings, in his long doctor's robe, stern-featured but indifferent, walked Henri Estienne, devotedly attached to the cause of the Reformation, while not two steps away, and equally oblivious of his surroundings, stood the Florentine refugee, Pietro Strozzi, pale and melancholy, leaning against a pillar, and gazing doubtless in his heart at far-off Italy, whither he was destined to return in chains, there to have no repose save in the tomb. We need not say that the nobly born Italian, a kinsman, through his mother, of Catherine de Medicis, was heart and soul devoted to the Catholic party. There, too, talking together of momentous affairs of state, and stopping frequently to look each other in the face as if to give more weight to what they were saying, were old Montmorency, to whom the king had given less than two years before the office of Constable, vacant since the fall of Bourbon, and the chancellor, Poyet, bursting with pride over the new tax he had imposed, and the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets, just countersigned by him.[8] Mingling with none of the various groups, taking part in no conversation, the Benedictine and Cordelier François Rabelais, with a smile which showed his white teeth, watched and listened and sneered, while Triboulet, his Majesty's favorite jester, rolled his humpback and his biting jests around between the legs of the guests, taking advantage of his pygmy-like stature to bite here and there without danger, if not without pain.