Were every hair upon his head a life,

And every life were to be supplicated

By numbers equal to those hairs quadrupled,

Life after life should out like waning stars

Before the daybreak — or as festive lamps,

Which have lent lustre to the midnight revel,

Each after each are quench’d when guests depart!

OLD PLAY

The entrance of Queen Berengaria into the interior of Richard’s pavilion was withstood — in the most respectful and reverential manner indeed, but still withstood — by the chamberlains who watched in the outer tent. She could hear the stern command of the King from within, prohibiting their entrance.

“You see,” said the Queen, appealing to Edith, as if she had exhausted all means of intercession in her power; “I knew it — the King will not receive us.”

At the same time, they heard Richard speak to some one within:—“Go, speed thine office quickly, sirrah, for in that consists thy mercy — ten byzants if thou dealest on him at one blow. And hark thee, villain, observe if his cheek loses colour, or his eye falters; mark me the smallest twitch of the features, or wink of the eyelid. I love to know how brave souls meet death.”

“If he sees my blade waved aloft without shrinking, he is the first ever did so,” answered a harsh, deep voice, which a sense of unusual awe had softened into a sound much lower than its usual coarse tones.

Edith could remain silent no longer. “If your Grace,” she said to the Queen, “make not your own way, I make it for you; or if not for your Majesty, for myself at least. — Chamberlain, the Queen demands to see King Richard — the wife to speak with her husband.”

“Noble lady,” said the officer, lowering his wand of office, “it grieves me to gainsay you, but his Majesty is busied on matters of life and death.”

“And we seek also to speak with him on matters of life and death,” said Edith. “I will make entrance for your Grace.” And putting aside the chamberlain with one hand, she laid hold on the curtain with the other.

“I dare not gainsay her Majesty’s pleasure,” said the chamberlain, yielding to the vehemence of the fair petitioner; and as he gave way, the Queen found herself obliged to enter the apartment of Richard.

The Monarch was lying on his couch, and at some distance, as awaiting his further commands, stood a man whose profession it was not difficult to conjecture. He was clothed in a jerkin of red cloth, which reached scantly below the shoulders, leaving the arms bare from about half way above the elbow; and as an upper garment, he wore, when about as at present to betake himself to his dreadful office, a coat or tabard without sleeves, something like that of a herald, made of dressed bull’s hide, and stained in the front with many a broad spot and speckle of dull crimson. The jerkin, and the tabard over it, reached the knee; and the nether stocks, or covering of the legs, were of the same leather which composed the tabard. A cap of rough shag served to hide the upper part of a visage which, like that of a screech owl, seemed desirous to conceal itself from light, the lower part of the face being obscured by a huge red beard, mingling with shaggy locks of the same colour. What features were seen were stern and misanthropical. The man’s figure was short, strongly made, with a neck like a bull, very broad shoulders, arms of great and disproportioned length, a huge square trunk, and thick bandy legs. This truculent official leant on a sword, the blade of which was nearly four feet and a half in length, while the handle of twenty inches, surrounded by a ring of lead plummets to counterpoise the weight of such a blade, rose considerably above the man’s head as he rested his arm upon its hilt, waiting for King Richard’s further directions.

On the sudden entrance of the ladies, Richard, who was then lying on his couch with his face towards the entrance, and resting on his elbow as he spoke to his grisly attendant, flung himself hastily, as if displeased and surprised, to the other side, turning his back to the Queen and the females of her train, and drawing around him the covering of his couch, which, by his own choice, or more probably the flattering selection of his chamberlains, consisted of two large lions’ skins, dressed in Venice with such admirable skill that they seemed softer than the hide of the deer.

Berengaria, such as we have described her, knew well — what woman knows not? — her own road to victory. After a hurried glance of undisguised and unaffected terror at the ghastly companion of her husband’s secret counsels, she rushed at once to the side of Richard’s couch, dropped on her knees, flung her mantle from her shoulders, showing, as they hung down at their full length, her beautiful golden tresses, and while her countenance seemed like the sun bursting through a cloud, yet bearing on its pallid front traces that its splendours have been obscured, she seized upon the right hand of the King, which, as he assumed his wonted posture, had been employed in dragging the covering of his couch, and gradually pulling it to her with a force which was resisted, though but faintly, she possessed herself of that arm, the prop of Christendom and the dread of Heathenesse, and imprisoning its strength in both her little fairy hands, she bent upon it her brow, and united to it her lips.

“What needs this, Berengaria?” said Richard, his head still averted, but his hand remaining under her control.

“Send away that man, his look kills me!” muttered Berengaria.

“Begone, sirrah,” said Richard, still without looking round, “What wait’st thou for? art thou fit to look on these ladies?”

“Your Highness’s pleasure touching the head,” said the man.

“Out with thee, dog!” answered Richard —“a Christian burial!” The man disappeared, after casting a look upon the beautiful Queen, in her deranged dress and natural loveliness, with a smile of admiration more hideous in its expression than even his usual scowl of cynical hatred against humanity.

“And now, foolish wench, what wishest thou?” said Richard, turning slowly and half reluctantly round to his royal suppliant.

But it was not in nature for any one, far less an admirer of beauty like Richard, to whom it stood only in the second rank to glory, to look without emotion on the countenance and the tremor of a creature so beautiful as Berengaria, or to feel, without sympathy, that her lips, her brow, were on his hand, and that it was wetted by her tears. By degrees, he turned on her his manly countenance, with the softest expression of which his large blue eye, which so often gleamed with insufferable light, was capable. Caressing her fair head, and mingling his large fingers in her beautiful and dishevelled locks, he raised and tenderly kissed the cherub countenance which seemed desirous to hide itself in his hand. The robust form, the broad, noble brow and majestic looks, the naked arm and shoulder, the lions’ skins among which he lay, and the fair, fragile feminine creature that kneeled by his side, might have served for a model of Hercules reconciling himself, after a quarrel, to his wife Dejanira.

“And, once more, what seeks the lady of my heart in her knight’s pavilion at this early and unwonted hour?”

“Pardon, my most gracious liege — pardon!” said the Queen, whose fears began again to unfit her for the duty of intercessor.

“Pardon — for what?” asked the King.

“First, for entering your royal presence too boldly and unadvisedly —”

She stopped.

“THOU too boldly! — the sun might as well ask pardon because his rays entered the windows of some wretch’s dungeon. But I was busied with work unfit for thee to witness, my gentle one; and I was unwilling, besides, that thou shouldst risk thy precious health where sickness had been so lately rife.”

“But thou art now well?” said the Queen, still delaying the communication which she feared to make.

“Well enough to break a lance on the bold crest of that champion who shall refuse to acknowledge thee the fairest dame in Christendom.”

“Thou wilt not then refuse me one boon — only one — only a poor life?”

“Ha! — proceed,” said King Richard, bending his brows.

“This unhappy Scottish knight —” murmured the Queen.

“Speak not of him, madam,” exclaimed Richard sternly; “he dies — his doom is fixed.”

“Nay, my royal liege and love, ’tis but a silken banner neglected. Berengaria will give thee another broidered with her own hand, and rich as ever dallied with the wind. Every pearl I have shall go to bedeck it, and with every pearl I will drop a tear of thankfulness to my generous knight.”

“Thou knowest not what thou sayest,” said the King, interrupting her in anger. “Pearls! can all the pearls of the East atone for a speck upon England’s honour — all the tears that ever woman’s eye wept wash away a stain on Richard’s fame? Go to, madam, know your place, and your time, and your sphere. At present we have duties in which you cannot be our partner.”

“Thou hearest, Edith,” whispered the Queen; “we shall but incense him.”

“Be it so,” said Edith, stepping forward. —“My lord, I, your poor kinswoman, crave you for justice rather than mercy; and to the cry of justice the ears of a monarch should be open at every time, place, and circumstance.”

“Ha! our cousin Edith?” said Richard, rising and sitting upright on the side of his couch, covered with his long camiscia. “She speaks ever kinglike, and kinglike will I answer her, so she bring no request unworthy herself or me.&rdquo............