“He has but now ridden--been driven, would be truer--from Albano. For the moment everything seems lost. Ferdinand is at the last extreme of exhaustion and agitation. Madam will come to quiet him?” “I will come, monsieur.” “Ah! _Dio mercè! Questo benefizio è una grande grazia._” We set out without delay. My companions took each an arm of me, laughing very gallant scorn of the lightning and my fright thereat. Between them, however, they bruised my poor shoulders horribly, in their instinctive efforts to come together and clutch one another whenever the thunder slammed. I was so dazed with the rain and uproar that I had little wit left me to note my surroundings as they hurried me, blown and breathless, up a flight of steps into a great hall, blazing with lights, thronged with confusion. Courtiers, nobles, mud-stained soldiers; weeping women, frightened maids--here they stood in gabbling, gesticulating groups, which were constantly detaching and discharging units into other groups, the whole contributing to a sum of frenzy which swayed the candle-flames. And throughout, threading the frantic maze, went scared pages and lackeys; all, from captain to scullion, looking for orders, and receiving none. There were a few whispers, a few who observed and remarked upon me, as my conductors forced me through the press, crying a passage to the royal closet. “It is the beautiful English witch! _O, quanti vezzi!_ They are going to try to cure him like King David!” The opening and swinging-to of a door; as instant a muffling of the tumult; the peace of a lofty anteroom, padded with thick carpets; a muttered challenge, a muttered answer; the passage of a further portal--and I was in the royal presence. Now, all my life I have had to battle with a fatal sense of humour. I will simply undertake to relate the test to which it was here put.