“If you had lived among green fields and damp marshes as long as I have, miss, you would know what poor stuff your chocolate is to fortify a man’s bones against ague and rheumatism. I am told the Spaniards brought it from Mexico, where the natives eat nothing else, from which comes the copper colour of their skins.” Denzi’s visit lasted over a month, during which time he rode into Oxfordshire twice, to see Lady Warner, stopping a night each time, lest that worthy person should fancy herself neglected. Sir John derived the utmost pleasure from the young man’s company, who bore himself towards his host with a respectful courtesy that had gone out of fashion after the murder of the King, and was rarely met with in an age when elderly men were generally spoken of as “old puts,” and considered proper subjects for “bubbling.” To Denzil the old campaigner opened his heart more freely than he had ever done to any one except a brother in arms; and although he was resolute in upholding the cause of Monarchy against Republicanism, he owned to the natural disappointment which he had felt at the King’s neglect of old friends, and reluctantly admitted that Charles, sauntering along Pall Mall with ruin at his heels, and the wickedest men and women in England for his chosen companions, was not a monarch to maintain and strengthen the public idea of the divinity that doth hedge a King. “Of all the lessons danger and adversity can teach he has learnt but one,” said Sir John, with a regretful sigh. “He has learnt the Horatian philosophy—to snatch the pleasures of the day, and care nothing what may happen on the morrow. I do not wonder that predictions of a sudden end to this globe of ours should have been bruited about of late; for if lust and profaneness could draw down fire from heaven, London would be in as perilous a case as Gomorrah. But I doubt such particular judgments belonged but to the infancy of this world, when men believed in a Personal God, interested in all their concerns, watchful to bless or to punish. We have now but the God of Spinoza—a God who is in all things and everywhere about us, of whom this Creation in which we move is but the garment—a Universal Essence which should govern and inform all we are and all we do; but not the Judge and Father of His people, to be reached by prayer and touched by pity.” “Ah, sir, our life here and hereafter is encompassed with mystery. To think is to be lost on the trackless ocean of doubt. The Papists have the easiest creed, for they believe that which they are taught, and take the mysteries of the unseen world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any fable of the Roman Church.”