On the steps, the King, who, to disguise himself the better, had borrowed one of my cloaks, stumbled and almost fell. This threw him into a fit of laughter; for no sooner was he engaged in an adventure which promised to be dangerous than his spirits invariably rose to such a degree as to make him the most charming companion in peril man ever had. He was still shaking, and pulling me to and fro in one of those boyish frolics which sometimes swayed him, when a sudden outcry inside the house startled us into sobriety, and reminded us all too soon of the business which brought us thither. Wondering what it might mean, I was about to rap on the door with my hilt when the King put me aside, and, by a happy instinct, tried the latch. The door yielded to his hands, and, slowly opening, gave us admittance. We found ourselves in a gloomy hall, ill-lit, and hung with patched arras. In one corner stood a group of servants. Of these some looked scared and some amused, but all were so much taken up with the movements of a harsh-faced woman, who was pacing the opposite side of the hall, that they did not heed our entrance. A momentary glance at this strange state of things showed me that the woman was Madame Nicholas; but I was still at a loss to guess what she was doing or what was happening in the house. I stood a moment, but finding she still took no notice of us, I beckoned to one of the servants, and bade him tell his mistress a gentleman would speak with her. The man went with the message; but she sent him off with a flea in his ear, and screamed at him so violently that for a moment I thought she was mad. Then it appeared that the object of her attention was a door at the side of the hall; for, stopping suddenly in her walk, she went up to it, and struck it passionately with her hands. "Come out!" she cried. "Come out, you villain!" Restraining the King, I went forward myself, and, saluting her politely, begged a word with her apart, thinking she would recognize me. Her answer, however, showed that she did not. "No!" she cried, waving me off, in the utmost excitement. "No; you will not get me away--I know you. You are as bad one as the other." Then turning again to the door, she continued, "Come out! Do you hear! Come out! I'll have no more of your intrigues and your Hallots!" I pricked up my ears at the name "But, Madame," I said, "one moment." "Begone!" she retorted, turning on me so wrathfully that I fairly recoiled before her. "I shall stay here till I drop; but I will have him out and expose him. There shall be an end of his precious plots and his Hallots if I have to go to the King!"