You are vindictive,she said,my lord;but we will find time and place to punish you.But once more to this same trouble-mirth,this Lady Varney.What of her health,Masters?She is sullen,madam,as I already said,replied Masters,and refuses to answer interrogatories,or be amenable to the authority of the mediciner.I conceive her to be possessed with a delirium,which I incline to term rather HYPOCHONDRIA than PHRENESIS;and I think she were best cared for by her husband in his own house,and removed from all this bustle of pageants,which disturbs her weak brain with the most fantastic phantoms.
She drops hints as if she were some great person in disguise--some Countess or Princess perchance.God help them,such are often the hallucinations of these infirm persons!Nay,then,said the Queen,away with her with all speed.Let Varney care for her with fitting humanity;but let them rid the Castle of her forthwith she will think herself lady of all,Iwarrant you.It is pity so fair a form,however,should have an infirm understanding.--What think you,my lord?It is pity indeed,said the Earl,repeating the words like a task which was set him.
But,perhaps,said Elizabeth,you do not join with us in our opinion of her beauty;and indeed we have known men prefer a statelier and more Juno-like form to that drooping fragile one that hung its head like a broken lily.Ay,men are tyrants,my lord,who esteem the animation of the strife above the triumph of an unresisting conquest,and,like sturdy champions,love best those women who can wage contest with them.--I could think with you,Rutland,that give my Lord of Leicester such a piece of painted wax for a bride,he would have wished her dead ere the end of the honeymoon.As she said this,she looked on Leicester so expressively that,while his heart revolted against the egregious falsehood,he did himself so much violence as to reply in a whisper that Leicester's love was more lowly than her Majesty deemed,since it was settled where he could never command,but must ever obey.
The Queen blushed,and bid him be silent;yet looked as of she expected that he would not obey her commands.But at that moment the flourish of trumpets and kettle-drums from a high balcony which overlooked the hall announced the entrance of the maskers,and relieved Leicester from the horrible state of constraint and dissimulation in which the result of his own duplicity had placed him.
The masque which entered consisted of four separate bands,which followed each other at brief intervals,each consisting of six principal persons and as many torch-bearers,and each representing one of the various nations by which England had at different times been occupied.
The aboriginal Britons,who first entered,were ushered in by two ancient Druids,whose hoary hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak,and who bore in their hands branches of mistletoe.The maskers who followed these venerable figures were succeeded by two Bards,arrayed in white,and bearing harps,which they occasionally touched,singing at the same time certain stanzas of an ancient hymn to Belus,or the Sun.The aboriginal Britons had been selected from amongst the tallest and most robust young gentlemen in attendance on the court.Their masks were accommodated with long,shaggy beards and hair;their vestments were of the hides of wolves and bears;while their legs,arms,and the upper parts of their bodies,being sheathed in flesh-coloured silk,on which were traced in grotesque lines representations of the heavenly bodies,and of animals and other terrestrial objects,gave them the lively appearance of our painted ancestors,whose freedom was first trenched upon by the Romans.
The sons of Rome,who came to civilize as well as to conquer,were next produced before the princely assembly;and the manager of the revels had correctly imitated the high crest and military habits of that celebrated people,accommodating them with the light yet strong buckler and the short two-edged sword,the use of which had made them victors of the world.The Roman eagles were borne before them by two standard-bearers,who recited a hymn to Mars,and the classical warriors followed with the grave and haughty step of men who aspired at universal conquest.
The third quadrille represented the Saxons,clad in the bearskins which they had brought with them from the German forests,and bearing in their hands the redoubtable battle-axes which made such havoc among the natives of Britain.They were preceded by two Scalds,who chanted the praises of Odin.
Last came the knightly Normans,in their mail-shirts and hoods of steel,with all the panoply of chivalry,and marshalled by two Minstrels,who sang of war and ladies'love.
These four bands entered the spacious hall with the utmost order,a short pause being made,that the spectators might satisfy their curiosity as to each quadrille before the appearance of the next.