"None but our pleasure, man! none but our pleasure!" cried the King. "His malice at Essex, poor fellow! will be no grace in our eyes; and as to his atheism, that shall be inquired into. We will have none such about the Court. Tell him to mind the proclamation; and, hark ye, gossip, there may be a new captain of the guard some day. Make the letter short, and do not say too much; we will do everything civilly, but I am thinking we can find a captain of the guard amongst our own friends;" and with these words began the ruin of Raleigh. The King soon after rose, and retired to rest; the courtiers remained for a few minutes conversing with apparent frankness over the strange scene which they had just witnessed, yet none of them venturing to give his real opinion to his neighbour; but Sir Robert Cecil afforded no one an opportunity of misrepresenting his words, for, after merely ordering his son to take care of Lakyn, he quitted the room, to write the letters, according to the King's command. CHAPTER VII. In a house not far from the Strand, there was a dark room, of somewhat large dimensions, lined with small square panels of black oak. The mantelpiece was of the same wood, richly carved with monkeys, and devils, and many a wild creature of the imagination, supporting the various cornices and crowning the three-twisted columns on either side, while, on a sort of entablature, appeared, in marquetry of sandal-wood and ebony, the whole history of King David, from his first encounter with Goliath of Gath to the death of Absalom. The figure of the Psalmist king, it is true, was not in the most harmonious proportions, his head being somewhat larger than his body, and his crown, after he had attained the dignity of empire, rather larger than his head. Goliath, from his protuberance before, must decidedly have taken but little exercise, and appeared to have had a fondness for turtle and venison, so that he might be strongly suspected of having sat as an alderman at the civic festivals of Gath. About Absalom, however, there could be no mistake, for his hair, which was of black ebony, could have belonged to nobody else on earth but himself, and greatly resembled the contents of an unpicked mattress. Some bears and stags were introduced, for reasons unassigned, and there were harps enough in various parts of the piece to have served David for twenty more books of psalms than ever he composed.[1] Nevertheless, it was a very splendid piece of sculpture in its way, and was the only thing that enlivened the room, if we except a silver sconce of three branches, with the lights which they contained. --------------- [Footnote 1: A similar mantelpiece is still to be seen in the house of J. Wood, Esq., of Sandwich, in which Queen Elizabeth resided during her visit to that ancient town.] ---------------