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.

For how could the Cardinal know that I was here?
How could he have known when he gave the order?
But I had short time to think of these things, or others.