"The Emperor is hourly expected at the palace. The forerunners have announced his approach. He is coming from a journey in the north of Gaul. Let's hasten to ride in ahead of him so that we may salute him on his arrival." The riders quickened their horses' steps, and before sunset they were entering the outer court of the palace--a vast space surrounded by many lodges of variously shaped roofs and architecture, and furnished with innumerable windows. Agreeable to a unique plan, with many of these structures the ground floor was wholly open and had the appearance of a shed whose massive stone pillars supported the masonry of the upper tiers of floors. A crowd of subaltern officers, of servants, and slaves of the palace, lived and lodged under these sheds, open to the four winds of heaven and heated in winter by means of large furnaces that were kept lighted night and day. This bizarre architecture was conceived by the ingenuity of the Emperor. It enabled him, from his observatory, to see with all the greater ease all that happened in these wall-less apartments. Several long corridors, profusely ornamented with richly sculptured columns and porticos after the fashion of Rome, connected with another set of buildings. A square pavilion, raised considerably above ground, dominated the system of structures. Octave called Vortigern's attention to a sort of balcony located in front of the pavilion. It was the Emperor's observatory. Everywhere a general stir announced the approaching arrival of Charles. Clerks, soldiers, women, officers, rhetoricians, monks and slaves crossed one another in great haste, while several bishops, anxious to present the first homages to the Emperor, were speeding towards the peristyle of the palace. So instantly was the Emperor expected and such was the hurly at the event, that when the cavalcade, of which Vortigern and his grandfather were a part, entered the court, several people, deceived by the martial appearance of the troupe, began to cry: "The Emperor!" "Here is the Emperor's escort!" The cry flew from mouth to mouth, and in an instant the spacious court was filled with a compact mass of servitors and pursuivants, through which the escort of the two Bretons was hardly able to break its way in order to reach a place near the principal portico. Hildebrad had chosen the spot in order to be among the first to meet Charles and to present to him the hostages whom he brought from Brittany. The crowd discovered its mistake in acclaiming the Emperor, but the false rumor had penetrated the palace and immediately the concubines of Charles, his daughters and grand-daughters, their servants and attendants, rushed out and grouped themselves on a spacious terrace above the portico, near which the two Bretons, together with their escort, had taken their stand. "Raise your eyes, Vortigern," Octave said to his companion. "Look and see what a bevy of beauties the Emperor's palace contains."