The siege was almost without incident and quite without excitement; the Austrians made no attempt to take the city by storm, and the French made no sallies. News of the outside war was their one diversion: all Europe was in arms; Spain and England had been the last to march on to the universal battle-field; France was but one member of a coalition that endeavoured to wrest new possessions from the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, whom English gold and Magyar loyalty alone supported. France had signed the Pragmatic Sanction that left her heiress to her father’s empire, but that promise had been lightly enough broken when France saw her advantage in allying herself with Frederick of Prussia, who, after his seizure of Silesia, had become a power in Europe. No Frenchman had any personal feeling about the war; Prussian was the same as Austrian in the eyes of most, and very few troubled to follow the ramifications of the policy that had led the Ministers who ruled in Paris to side with the effete Elector rather than the gallant Queen of Hungary in this struggle for the succession of Charles V. Therefore, with no interest in the war, little news from home, enclosed in a foreign and half-barbarous town among a people strange and mostly unfriendly, the French, during the long months of the nominal siege, were utterly overcome with weariness and a dispirited lassitude from which these four standing over the charcoal pan in the Vladislav Hall were not wholly free. The opening of the door at the farther end of the hall caused them all to turn with the expectancy born of monotony. Several figures entered the shadows, themselves dark and casting shadows by reason of the lantern the foremost held. The officers moved forward. The light of dim lamp and swinging lantern was merely confusing to the sight; the advancing group threw fantastic blots of shade, and seemed to merge, subdivide, and merge again until there might have been ten people or two coming down the great bare aisle of the hall. When the light above the throne at last flung its feeble illumination over them, it disclosed a stout Bohemian servant carrying a lantern, a young man in a splendid dress of scarlet and fur, and a woman rather clumsily muffled in a military cloak which was caught up so as to show her riding-boots and fantastic long spurs. The officers saluted; the lady paused and looked at her companion, who returned the salute and said in good French, “We are prisoners, I believe.” “Austrians?” asked the Colonel. “No: Poles. On our way to Paris. We were captured by the Pandours, who routed our escort, and then by a Bohemian regiment, who considered us enemies”--he smiled engagingly. “But I have induced them to allow me an audience of M. de Belleisle, who, I am certain, will allow us on our way.” “Why, doubtless,” returned the Frenchman, with disinterested courtesy; “but it is severe weather for travelling, and in time of war, with a lady.”