The seneschal conducted them with much ceremony to the knight's apartments in the castle, where a small table placed by the side of an enormous log-fire in the middle of the room, and plentifully furnished with cold salted and dried meats, together with the thin wines of France, and the more potent juice of the German grape, soon made him forget the cold and thirst he had endured in the forest. The beer he quaffed with peculiar pleasure, as it invitingly foamed in a silver tankard, which had been thickly embossed by the abbot of Wansfort, and presented by him to the Emperor Baldwin previous to his embarkation for the Holy Land. Having praised the flavour of the beer and helped himself to some slices from a well cured wild boar's head, he said to the chamberlain, "And Baldwin of Avesnes is not yet arrived, you say?" "No, Count," replied the chamberlain; "we expected he would be with you." "Why, my road lay through Namur, and he comes directly from Bruges. I marvel therefore he be not arrived--and I have news for him," said the knight. [The next page includes a passing notice of the _introduction of chimneys_ into England, referable, though not without dispute, to this date:--] The warder's horn was again heard; and after due time the person in question made his appearance. He looked harassed and fatigued, and gladly took the seat Count Guy pointed to, close by his own, and having stirred the logs which burned lazily in the huge hearth, he observed, "Methinks the wood emits this sulphureous vapour more strongly than ever. I marvel, Guy, that you have not repaid the compliment of the English king's invitation to your weavers, by bringing over workmen to build you some of those long narrow passages which, beginning just over the fire, project from the top of the house to carry off the smoke." "What mean you, Baldwin?" "Nay, have you not heard that in England they are beginning to build along the end of the rooms, lodges or troughs to contain the fuel, on the base of which they raise a brick funnel, through which all the smoke mounts and so evaporates at the top of the house?" replied Baldwin. "Think you then, d'Avesnes, that the whole room can be warmed with the fire at one end of it, particularly if the smoke be carried out?" "Indeed they say," replied d'Avesnes, "it casts a strong heat everywhere." ["The Black Lady" is thus characterised:--"They speak of her as one entirely destitute of natural sensibility; they hint at some dark practices, and they designate her so frequently by the epithet of the 'Black Lady,' that many, both in Hainault and Flanders, are ignorant that this is not really her title." Here follows a whole-length portrait of this specimen of black-letter majesty.]