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.'
I did so, in a deeper stupor than before.
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