Here and there white stone gods and goddesses gleamed amidst the dark yew paths, and would have seemed to render the silence of the place still more intense, had it not been broken by the voices of the myriad insect creatures footing it merrily among the parterres, and the darting butterflies, while stout old bumble-bees hummed cogitatively as they gathered in their wealth, as if they were mentally reckoning the probable sum total of its returns; and all to the music of Sir Cuckoo, who had a vast deal to promise of the good time coming. [Sidenote: A reverie.] Well, well; and Lawrence Lee, rising from his seat on the fountain's brink, and strolling listlessly onward by the nearest path, heaved a prolonged and heart-vexed sigh, making all the while not too flattering comparisons between these careless denizens of the king's pleasaunce--the bees, of course, simply proving his case by their exceptional prudence--who troubled their feather-brains not one doit about to-morrow's storms, which were as likely as not--more likely than not, indeed, to fall; as you might see if you would but spare half an eye towards the south-eastward horizon--and the king himself. As to the idiotic, selfish, frivolous lot about him, they were beneath contempt, Lawrence considered. To compare them with the butterflies and gnats would be an insult--to the insects. This stage of his meditations brought him so near to the foot of a flight of rustic wooden steps that he tripped upon the lowermost one; and looking upward, as he recovered his balance, he saw that they wound up to some height, terminating at the entrance of a pavilion of octagon shape, built into the angle of the wall, and partly overhanging the road running beneath. For sheer lack of something better to wile away his enforced leisure--for to see the king again, by hook or by crook, Lawrence was determined--he ascended the steps, and found himself in a small eight-sided chamber. Its walls were studded with morsels of spar, bright-coloured shells, and bits of looking-glass disposed in various and eye-fatiguing geometrical devices, sparkling like Hassan's cave in the rays of sun, now beating fiercely through the two windows. One of these looked upon the road, the other, commanding a view of the rear of the palace, admitted light into the place; but in accordance with the rule of such pleasure-houses, no air, since they were "not made to open." [Sidenote: The summer house.] Nevertheless, a cool breeze rustled in through the doorless entrance; and Lawrence, wearied out, and still dizzy with the fumes of the wine which had been forced upon him, sank upon the part of the bench running round the wall which was nearest the inner window, and fell to a listless contemplation of the scene before him.