“A very palace of fairies,” he murmured, and, indeed, he seemed to behold, unfolding itself before him, one of those tales in which wandering knights discover enchanted castles. Were they indeed mortal creatures that inhabited this matchless abode? Were they real women who came and sat on these chairs and whose graceful outlines had left on those cushions that slight impress, so suggestive, even yet, of indolence? Who knows but that, behind those thick curtains, at the end of some long dazzling gallery, there may perhaps soon appear a princess asleep for the last hundred years, a fairy in hoops, an Armida in spangles, or some court hamadryad that shall issue forth from this marble column, or burst from out of that gilded panel? Bewildered, almost overpowered, at the sight of all these novel objects, the young chevalier, in order the better to indulge his reverie, had thrown himself on a sofa, and would doubtless have forgotten himself there for some time had he not remembered that he was in love. What, at this hour, was Mademoiselle d’Annebault, his beloved, doing--left behind in her old château? “Athénaïs!” he exclaimed suddenly, “why do I thus waste my time here? Is my mind wandering? Great heavens! Where am I? And what is going on within me?” He soon rose and continued his travels through this _terra incognita_, and of course lost his way. Two or three lackeys, speaking in a low voice, stood before him at the end of a gallery. He walked toward them and asked how he should find his way to the play. “If M. le Marquis,” he was answered (the same title being still benevolently granted him), “will give himself the trouble to go down that staircase and follow the gallery on the right, he will find at the end of it three steps going up; he will then turn to the left, go through the Diana salon, that of Apollo, that of the Muses, and that of Spring; he will go down six steps more, then, leaving the Guards’ Hall on his right and crossing over to the Ministers’ staircase, he will not fail to meet there other ushers who will show him the way.” “Much obliged,” said the chevalier, “with such excellent instruction, it will certainly be my fault if I do not find my way.” He set off again boldly, constantly stopping, however, in spite of himself, to look from side to side, then once more remembering his love. At last, at the end of a full quarter of an hour, he once more found, as he had been told, a group of lackeys. “M. le Marquis is mistaken,” they informed him; “it is through the other wing of the château that he should have gone, but nothing is easier for him than to retrace his steps. M. le Marquis has but to go down this staircase, then he will cross the salon of the Nymphs, that of Summer, that of--”