De Blenau's own feelings were not of the most comfortable nature; but on looking round the room, he guessed, from the faces of all those with whom it was tenanted, that such sensations were but too common there. One had placed himself at a window, and gazed upon the stones of the court-yard with as much earnestness as if they had inspired him with the deepest interest. Another walked up and down his own corner with irregular steps and downcast look. Another leaned back in his seat, with his chin resting on his breast, and regarded intently a door in the other side of the saloon. And another sat bending his hat into so many shapes, that he left it, in the end, of no shape at all. But all were marked, by the knitted brow and anxious eye, for men whose fate was hanging on the breath of another. There was nothing consolatory in their looks, and De Blenau turned to the portraits which covered the walls of the saloon. The first that his eye fell upon was that of the famous Montmorency. He was represented as armed in steel, with the head uncovered; and from his apparent age it seemed that the picture had not been painted long before the unfortunate conspiracy, which, by its failure, brought him to the scaffold. There was also an expression of grave sadness in the countenance, as if he had presaged his approaching fate. De Blenau turned to another; but it so happened that each picture in the room represented some one of the many whom Richelieu's unsparing vengeance had overtaken. Whether they were placed in that waiting-room in order to overawe those whom the Minister wished to intimidate; or whether it was that the famous gallery, which the Cardinal had filled with portraits of all the principal historical characters of France, would contain no more, and that in consequence the pictures of the later dates had been placed in this saloon, without any deeper intent, matters not; but at all events they offered no very pleasant subject of contemplation. De Blenau, however, was not long kept in suspense; for, in a few minutes, the door on the other side of the room opened, and the Swedish Ambassador passed out. The door shut behind him, but in a moment after an attendant entered, and although several others had been waiting before him, De Blenau was the first summoned to the presence of the Cardinal.