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199 ONE:But Reuben did not care. He had won his heart's desire, and public opinion could go where everything else he was supposed to value, and didn't, had gone. In a way he was sorry, for he would have liked to discuss his triumph at the Cocks, seasoning it with pints of decadent ale. As things were, he had no one to talk it over with but the farm-men, who grumbled because it meant more work��Maude, who said she'd be sorry when all that pretty gorse was cleared away��and old mad Harry, now something very like a grasshopper, whose conversation since the blaze at Grandturzel had[Pg 456] been limited entirely to the statement that "the house was afire, and the children were burning."While she was listening and wondering at the lateness of the hour, the hall door was suddenly thrown open, and a blaze of light, and a strain of melody, burst simultaneously upon her senses. A dozen minstrels gaily attired with timbrels, cornets, sackbuts, and other instruments, preceded by as many youths, carrying large wax tapers or torch-lights, formed into a double rank in the hall; in the middle of which passed the city pageant. The lord mayor was at its head, habited as an emperor, in a tunic of cloth of gold, tastefully embroidered with black eagles, and the sleeves, which hung full, confined at the wrist and just below the elbow, by bands of black velvet, on which eagles were represented by small pearls. A mantle of black velvet lined with minever, or powdered ermine, floated from his shoulder. On his right hand was a citizen attired as the pope. Then followed the twenty-four aldermen in the dress of cardinals; then forty-eight in the gowns of say and red cloaks of esquires;��others in the purple robe, lined with fur, peculiar to the knight: while some, still more ambitious, wore the emblazoned surcoat of a baron.