At the end of the hall hung a richly embroidered curtain of black velvet,powdered with suns and stars,the king’s favourite devices,and broidered on the colour he loved best.Perhaps she was hiding behind that? He would try at any rate.
So he stole quietly across,and drew it aside.No;there was only another room,though a prettier room,he thought,than the one he had just left.The walls were hung with a many-figured green arras of needlewrought tapestry representing a hunt,the work of some Flemish artists who had spent more than seven years in its composition.It had once been the chamber of Jean le Fou,as he was called,that mad king who was so enamoured of the chase that he had often tried in his delirium to mount the huge rearing horses and to drag down the stag on which the great hounds were leaping,sounding his hunting horn and stabbing with his dagger at the pale flying deer.It was now used as the council-room,and on the centre table were lying the red portfolios of the ministers,stamped with the gold tulips of Spain,and with the arms and emblems of the house of Hapsburg.