WALTER MAP. The father's eye was so tender it would have called a goose off the green, and once he strove to hide his face, like the Greek king when his daughter was sacrificed, but he thought better of it: it was but the sacrifice of a kingdom to his son, a smaller matter; but as to the young crownling himself, he looked so malapert in the eyes, that had I fathered him I had given him more of the rod than the sceptre. Then followed the thunder of the captains and the shouting, and so we came on to the banquet, from whence there puffed out such an incense of unctuosity into the nostrils of our Gods of Church and State, that Lucullus or Apicius might have sniffed it in their Hades of heathenism, so that the smell of their own roast had not come across it-- HERBERT. Map, tho' you make your butt too big, you overshoot it. WALTER MAP. --For as to the fish, they de-miracled the miraculous draught, and might have sunk a navy-- HERBERT. There again, Goliasing and Goliathising! WALTER MAP. --And as for the flesh at table, a whole Peter's sheet, with all manner of game, and four-footed things, and fowls-- HERBERT. And all manner of creeping things too? WALTER MAP. --Well, there were Abbots--but they did not bring their women; and so we were dull enough at first, but in the end we flourished out into a merriment; for the old King would act servitor and hand a dish to his son; whereupon my Lord of York--his fine-cut face bowing and beaming with all that courtesy which hath less loyalty in it than the backward scrape of the clown's heel--'great honour,' says he, 'from the King's self to the King's son.' Did you hear the young King's quip? HERBERT. No, what was it? WALTER MAP. Glancing at the days when his father was only Earl of Anjou, he answered:--'Should not an earl's son wait on a king's son?' And when the cold corners of the King's mouth began to thaw, there was a great motion of laughter among us, part real, part childlike, to be freed from the dulness--part royal, for King and kingling both laughed, and so we could not but laugh, as by a royal necessity--part childlike again--when we felt we had laughed too long and could not stay ourselves--many midriff-shaken even to tears, as springs gush out after earthquakes--but from those, as I said before, there may come a conflagration--tho', to keep the figure moist and make it hold water, I should say rather, the lacrymation of a lamentation; but look if Thomas have not flung himself at the King's feet. They have made it up again--for the moment. HERBERT. Thanks to the blessed Magdalen, whose day it is. _Re-enter_ HENRY _and_ BECKET. (_During their conference the_ BARONS _and_ BISHOPS _of_ FRANCE _and_ ENGLAND _come in at back of stage_.) BECKET. Ay, King! for in thy kingdom, as thou knowest, The spouse of the Great King, thy King, hath fallen-- The daughter of Zion lies beside the way-- The priests of Baal tread her underfoot-- The golden ornaments are stolen from her--