And certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where, some mornings, when the Court was in Paris, I had seen a score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer on guard, twirling his moustachios, looked at me in wonder as I passed him; the lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the stairs and came to the door of the ante-chamber outdid all. The man on guard would have opened the door, but when I went to enter, a major-domo who was standing by, muttering with two or three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me. ‘Your business, Monsieur, if you please?’ he said inquisitively; while I wondered why he and the others looked at me so strangely. ‘I am M. de Berault,’ I answered sharply. ‘I have the entree.’ He bowed politely enough. ‘Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,’ he said. ‘But--pardon me. Have you business with his Eminence?’ ‘I have the common business,’ I answered sharply. ‘By which many of us live, sirrah! To wait on him.’ ‘But--by appointment, Monsieur?’ ‘No,’ I said, astonished. ‘It is the usual hour. For the matter of that, however, I have business with him.’ The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment. Then he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed in, uncovering; with an assured face and steadfast mien, ready to meet all eyes. In a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained. The room was empty. CHAPTER XV. ST MARTIN’S SUMMER Yes, at the great Cardinal’s levee I was the only client! I stared round the room, a long, narrow gallery, through which it was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I stared, I say, from side to side, in a state of stupefaction. The seats against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty too. The hat sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms looked down on a vacant floor. Only on a little stool by the farther door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great. Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought--for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu’s old hotel so crowded that he could not walk through it--this man closed his book, rose and came noiselessly towards me. ‘M. de Berault?’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me.’