This revelation of the puissance of our mistress was not without its effect upon the King and his ministers. At first they seemed to extend only a languid interest to our business, but the manner in which Sir Richard Pendragon conducted it began to stimulate their attention. Indeed, it must have taken very cold-blooded statesmen not to derive interest from Sir Richard Pendragon’s presentment of the case. Taking the genealogical chart as a kind of map of Spain, with one finger he indicated the stronghold of the King of Castile, at fifty leagues’ distance from Toledo, and with another traced his broad dominion upon which our mistress was already marching with forty thousand men-at-arms. He declared that it was the Countess Sylvia’s plan to draw the King of Castile out of his stronghold by falling upon and laying waste his unprotected lands; and then, while the Castilian was fully engaged in defending his own, she proposed that an army of her royal nephew’s should come up in the rear--quite unexpectedly, for the nature of this present mission was known to none--enter the unprotected stronghold of the former enemy of King Louis, and seize it for France. With such conviction and enthusiasm did Sir Richard Pendragon expound a plan of war that was entirely of his own invention, that King Louis, who at first had not listened very closely to a proposal that was outside the sphere of his politics, began to nod his head in approval. And finally the King of France was moved to hold animated converse with his ministers. After they had spoken together for some while, one of these gentlemen directed Sir Richard Pendragon’s attention to the fact that although ten thousand was the number of soldiers that he asked for, according to the tenor of madam’s petition the number was no more than four thousand. Thereupon Sir Richard Pendragon produced a large pair of horn spectacles, adjusted them gravely, and after scrutinizing the parchment very carefully, although there is reason to believe that madam’s ambassador was able to read little of the Spanish tongue, he gave it as his opinion that the four thousand was an undoubted error of the scrivener’s, inasmuch--and he spoke very truly in this particular--that the author of the proposal was himself. This assurance being given, the King and his ministers again conferred; and presently the audience was terminated by his Majesty saying that this affair was of such moment that he desired twenty-four hours in which to sit in council with his advisers. The King then took leave of us, yet with a courteous request that the envoys of his respected aunt--who, according to Sir Richard Pendragon, was a learned and devout lady of mature years--should be lodged in the palace during their stay at Paris, and further, that they should engage themselves to dine with him that evening. CHAPTER XXVIII OF FURTHER PASSAGES IN THE LOUVRE AT PARIS