“Come!” said the father, taking him by the hand and leading him into the great hall. At this epoch of our history, a duke and peer, with great possessions, holding public offices and the government of a province, lived the life of a prince; the cadets of his family did not revolt at serving him. He had his household guard and officers; the first lieutenant of his ordnance company was to him what, in our day, an aide-de-camp is to a marshal. A few years later, Cardinal de Richelieu had his body-guard. Several princes allied to the royal house--Guise, Conde, Nevers, and Vendome, etc.--had pages chosen among the sons of the best families,--a last lingering custom of departed chivalry. The wealth of the Duc d’Herouville, and the antiquity of his Norman race indicated by his name (“herus villoe”), permitted him to imitate the magnificence of families who were in other respects his inferiors,--those, for instance, of Epernon, Luynes, Balagny, d’O, Zamet, regarded as parvenus, but living, nevertheless, as princes. It was therefore an imposing spectacle for poor Etienne to see the assemblage of retainers of all kinds attached to the service of his father. The duke seated himself on a chair of state placed under a “solium,” or dais of carved word, above a platform raised by several steps, from which, in certain provinces, the great seigneurs still delivered judgment on their vassals,--a vestige of feudality which disappeared under the reign of Richelieu. These thrones, like the warden’s benches of the churches, have now become objects of collection as curiosities. When Etienne was placed beside his father on that raised platform, he shuddered at feeling himself the centre to which all eyes turned. “Do not tremble,” said the duke, bending his bald head to his son’s ear; “these people are only our servants.”