The Friends of Fontainbleau

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Tfo Duke knows him for no other but a poor officer. Shidsspeare.?Ah 'and Well That Ends Well. The scene which met the eye of Pierre, on arriving at the Place des Armes, was one full of beauty, for the foliage mingling with the antique buildings of the town, and waving above the pinnacled...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Tfo Duke knows him for no other but a poor officer. Shidsspeare.?Ah 'and Well That Ends Well. The scene which met the eye of Pierre, on arriving at the Place des Armes, was one full of beauty, for the foliage mingling with the antique buildings of the town, and waving above the pinnacled towers of the extensive palace, was richly gilded by the setting sun, whose level beams shot in long radiance through the western avenues of houses upon the countless throng and the lines of guards, who in their burnished armour stood ranged before the royal residence. Strange faces, and garments as varied and many coloured as the summerblossoms of the forest, half hid in shadow, half revealed by the piercing rays of the golden orb of day, vied in brightness with the glittering casements and the gorgeous drapery floating in lavish splendour from the surrounding walls of the square, till moving heads, and plumes, and draperies, melted into a confused mass of brightness in the sunny distance, and were lost at length amidst the purple background of the undulating forest. With foolish wonder the minstrel gazed upon the confused crowds already thus assembled in eager expectation of the arrival of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, though their absence, as his master had previously informed him, had been of brief duration. Newly transported from the deep solitudes of Angou- mois, he was half inclined to think the whole the work of enchantment, when he thus found himself surrounded so suddenly by a greater multitude than he had hitherto imagined the world to contain. There were women of the lower ranks in then' holyday suits and towering head-dresses, peasants, tradesmen and menials of the Court; but by far the greatest mass was composed of disbanded officers, who...