There was at that time a large open space round the church of St. Sauveur, in Blois, where the people from the country used occasionally to exhibit their fruits and flowers for sale; and exactly opposite the great door of the church stood a large and splendid mansion, with an internal court-yard, part of which had been let to some of the deputies for the States-General. The principal floor, however, consisting of sixteen rooms, and several large passages and corridors, had been left untenanted, in consequence of the proprietor asking an exorbitant rent, till two or three days before the period of which we speak. Then, however, the apartment was taken suddenly, a number of attendants in new and splendid dresses appeared therein; and, as we have seen from the account of Villequier to the King, the Abbé de Boisguerin arrived in Blois, with a splendid train of attendants, and took up his abode as the master of that dwelling. About the same time that the conversations which we have detailed in the last chapter were going on in the cabinet of the Duke of Guise, the Abbé was seated in one of the rooms, which he had fixed upon for his own peculiar saloon. It was very customary in those days, and in France, for every chamber, except a great hall of reception, to be used also as a bed-room. But that was not the case in this instance; for the chamber, which was small, though very lofty, had been used by the former occupants as a cabinet, and had been chosen by the Abbé probably on account of its being so completely detached from every other chamber, that no sound of what was done or said therein could be overheard by any one. He sat in a large arm-chair, with his feet towards the fire, and with his right elbow resting on a table covered with various sorts of delicacies. Those delicacies, however, were not the productions of the land in which he then lived, but rather such as he had been accustomed to in other days, and which recalled former habits of life. There were fine dried fruits from the Levant, tunny and other fish from the Mediterranean; and the wines, though inferior to those of France, were from foreign vineyards. Before him was standing a man whom we have had occasion to mention more than once--that Italian vagabond named Orbi, from whom, it may be remembered, Charles of Montsoreau delivered the boy Ignati. He was now dressed in a very different guise, however, from that which he had borne while wandering as a mere stroller from house to house. His shaggy black hair was trimmed and smooth; his beard was partially shaved and reduced to fair proportions, with a sleek mustachio, well turned and oiled, gracing his upper lip; his face, too, was clean; and a suit somewhat sombre in colour, but of good materials, displaying in the ruff and at the sleeves a great quantity of fine white linen and rich lace, left scarcely a vestige of the fierce Italian vagabond, half bravo, half minstrel, which he had appeared not a year before.