Then with a nod or two he passed on to a second door, tapped upon it softly and went through, closing it behind him.

I heard a woman's laugh as he went through, suddenly broken off.
There was, I supposed (and as I learned afterwards to be the case) one other way at least out of the King's lodgings, through his private library, where he kept all his clocks and wheels and such-like; for when, after a minute or two, the door opened again and Mr.Chiffinch beckoned me in, there was no woman with the King.
It was a great room--His Majesty's closet as it was called--which he used for such solitary life as he led; and while I was with him, and afterwards upon other occasions, I saw little by little how it was furnished.

The table in the midst, at which His Majesty wrote, was all in disorder; it was piled high with papers and books, for he would do what writing or reading he cared to do by fits and starts.

The walls were hung with panels of tapestry, and tall curtains of brocade hung at the windows.

Between the panels were pictures hung upon the walls--three or four flower-pictures by Varelst; three pictures of horses and dogs by Hondius, and a couple of Dutch pictures by Hoogstraaten.