Lagardere remained alone for a while in the room, pensively contemplating the portraits of the Three Louis. Then the sound of footsteps came to his ears, footsteps advancing from many directions, footsteps all making towards the great hall. He smiled as a man smiles who is prepared to encounter cheerfully great odds, and then, as if there were observing eyes upon him, though indeed no eyes beheld him save those that were painted in the canvases of the three friends, he slouched across the room, more markedly the hunchback than ever, till he came to the curtained door by the side of the picture of Louis de Nevers. He lifted the curtain, glanced round him for a moment at the empty room, and then dipped behind the curtain. The curtain fell, the room was empty, save for the painted presences of the Three Louis. But the room was not empty long. A few moments later Gonzague entered the room respectfully escorting his illustrious master and friend, Louis of France. At their heels followed a little crowd of notabilities, eminent lawyers, eminent ecclesiastics, all of whom had claim, by virtue of their kinship or by virtue of their authority on delicate, contested family matters, to a seat and a voice in the council that Louis of Gonzague had been pleased to summon. After these again came Gonzague's own little tail of partisans, Navailles and Nocé, Taranne and Oriol, Choisy and Gironne, Albret and Montaubert, with Chavernay fluttering about them like an impudent butterfly, laughing at them, laughing at his august cousin, laughing at the king, laughing at himself--laughing at everything. To him such a family gathering as this which he attended was almost the most ridiculous thing imaginable on the face of the whole world, and therefore deserving of consideration, if not of serious consideration. The king took his place upon the kind of little throne which had been set apart for him. The rest of the company arranged themselves with instinctive sense of precedence upon the chairs that were ranged behind it. To Chavernay the whole thing looked like a pompous parody of a trial where there was nobody to be tried, and he made unceasing jokes to his neighbors, which compelled them to laugh. This earned for him a disapproving glance from the dark eyes of Gonzague, which had no effect whatever in depressing his spirits.