The quiet, dusky paths had led him to a point where high walls carefully shrouded in creepers shut off the royal stables from view. Through circular barred grilles he could hear the noise of horses champing in their stalls; and the comfortable sound drew him round to the entrance. Opening a wicket, he stood in a dimly lighted court, but the buildings surrounding it contained plenty of light, and in the harness rooms a brisk sound of furbishing went on. Turning to the left he passed into the largest stable of all, a spacious and well-aired chamber of corridor-like proportions divided up into stalls. To right and left of him stood the famous piebald ponies, lazily munching fodder and settling down to their last sleep before the unusual exertions which would be required of them on the morrow. But these pampered minions did not know as he did what the morrow had in store: how, for the sake of effect, they would be harnessed to a huge obsolete coach weighing a couple of tons, each clad in an elaborate costume of crimson and gold weighing by itself considerably more than a full-grown rider. To the King this presumed ignorance of theirs was a matter for envy; he knew his own part in the affair well enough; the thought of it oppressed him. He walked down the double line--twelve in all--pausing now and then to take a closer look and judge of their condition, but keeping always at a respectful distance, for he was aware that almost without exception they were an ill-tempered crew. Contemplating the astonishing rotundity of their well-filled bodies, the spacious ease of their accommodation, the outward dignity of circumstances, and the absolute lack of freedom which conditioned their whole existence, he was struck with the resemblance between himself and them; and recalling how, with a similar sense of kinship, St. Francis had preached to the lower forms of life he too became imbued with the spirit of homily and prophecy, though it did not actually find its way into words.