Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
The next room was the antechamber to the marquis's bedroom: timorously
on tiptoe he stepped through it, fearful of waking the two young
gentlemen--for Scudamore's place had been easily supplied--who waited
upon his lordship. Opening the inner door as softly as he could, he
crept in, and found the marquis fast asleep. So slowly, so gently did he
wake him, that his lordship insisted he had not slept at all; but when
he told him that the time was come--
'What time?' he asked.
'For meeting the king,' replied the doctor.
'What king?' rejoined the marquis, in a kind of bewildered horror.
The more he came to himself, the more distressed he seemed, and the more
unwilling to keep the appointment he had been so eager to make, so that
at length even Dr. Bayly was tempted to doubt something evil in the
'design that carried with it such a conflict within the bosom of the
actor.' It soon became evident, however, that it was but the dread of
such possible consequences as I have already indicated that thus moved
him.
'Fie, fie!' he said; 'I would to God I had let it alone.'
'My lord,' said the doctor, 'you know your own heart best. If there be
nothing in your intentions but what is good and justifiable, you need
not fear; if otherwise, it is never too late to repent.'
'Ah, doctor!' returned the marquis with troubled look, 'I thought I had
been sure of one friend, and that you would never have harboured the
least suspicion of me. God knows my heart: I have no other intention
towards his majesty than to make him a glorious man here, and a
glorified saint hereafter.'
'Then, my lord,' said Dr. Bayly, 'shake off these fears together with
the drowsiness that begat them. Honi soit qui mal y pense.'
'Oh, but I am not of that order!' said the marquis; 'but I thank God I
wear that motto about my heart, to as much purpose as they who wear it
about their arms.'
'He then,' reports the doctor, 'began to be a little pleasant, and took
a pipe of tobacco, and a little glass full of aqua mirabilis, and said,
"Come now, let us go in the name of God," crossing himself.'
My love for the marquis has led me to recount this curious story with
greater minuteness than is necessary to the understanding of Dorothy's
part in what follows, but the worthy doctor's account is so graphic that
even for its own sake, had it been fitting, I would gladly have copied
it word for word from the Certamen Religiosum.
It is indeed a strange story--king and marquis, attended by a doctor of
divinity, of the faith of the one, but the trusted friend of the other,
meeting--at midnight, although in the house of the marquis--to discuss
points of theology--both king and marquis in mortal terror of discovery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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