The room, shut away from all disturbance, was brilliantly lighted. In the midst, at a gorgeous escritoire, sat a secretary in black, biting a pen. Hard by stood a staff officer--in a glittering uniform, but sopped and mud-splashed--who incessantly, with a white, nervous hand, turned down and bit at his moustache, making a motion with his lips as if he were talking to himself. The two all the time followed with their eyes the movements of a third figure, the only other in the room, which went to and fro, up and down, in a sort of tripping dance, gabbling an eternal accompaniment the while to its own _chassé_, and at odd moments ringing a little gilt bell which it carried in its hand. This in itself, to be sure, was sufficiently remarkable; but O, my friend, for the appearance of this eccentric, who indeed was no other than the monarch himself. Cocked on the top of his large head was a little tie-wig, which, for the last touch to disguise, he had borrowed during his flight from the Duke of Ascoli, after exchanging clothes with that peer, who was a much smaller man. The effect may be imagined. His Majesty’s breeches’ ends were half-way up his thighs; his waistcoat was a mere rope under his arm-pits; his coat-tails stuck apart from the small of his back like ill-fitting wing-cases. Add to this that he was pinned all over with holy pictures, and hung with reliquaries and medals like a mountebank at a fair, and the picture is complete. The lightning penetrated the ruddy blinds with no more than the silent flicker of a ghost; but no glass could muffle the shattering reports of the thunder, at every clap of which His Majesty whinnied and crossed himself-- “O Lord, spare Thine anointed! Beloved saints, be particular to point out to Him where I am!” (ring). “This, you must know, is not my usual cabinet; but I will withdraw to my own, if you desire it, though it is in the hands of the decorators. There!--O!--San Gennaro, protect me! Caution our Master of the risk of striking among the chimneys, lest the levin brand, following a wrong course, enter this room instead of another, and destroy me in mistake for a lesser man” (ring). “_Dio non vóglia!_ O, saints! I believe I am struck! No, it is my breeches splitting. But they are Ascoli’s. Make no mistake, Lord. I am not Ascoli. Take the breeches, but spare the king!” He shut his ears distracted to a louder boom, and immediately was off again at a tangent--